


Hiatus

by HappyReader82



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: AU, F/F, Mistaken Identity, Office AU, The Secret Of My Success
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-06-08
Packaged: 2018-06-02 03:24:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 38,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6548665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappyReader82/pseuds/HappyReader82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warehouse 13 meets 1987's capitalism-com The Secret Of My Success. Mistaken identity abounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Interviews

"Why do you really want this job, Ms. Wells?"

 

The woman - girl, really, 25 at a push even through a half-inch of makeup - leans forward conspiratorially, inviting confidences.

 

Helena steadies her breath.

 

"There's no agenda," she says. "I saw your ad, and thought I might be a good fit. That I might have something useful to bring to the table."

 

"You're kidding me, right?" says the girl. "You have 12 years' industry experience. Director level. Masters' degree. Guest lectures. Some of the other applicants... you could have taught the courses they just graduated from. You being here today, it makes no sense."

 

"So you're saying I'm too qualified?"

 

"That's not all I'm saying, but yes. You most certainly are that."

 

"And isn't that a good thing? Shouldn't experience work in my favour in this context? Especially if I'm as competent as you seem to think."

 

"This is an entry-level position. Junior Designer. We're looking for college grads, people new to the job market. I thought the description in the ad was pretty clear on that front."

 

"Yes. I can say only that I saw it, and hoped for the best regardless."

 

"Ms. Wells, why are you here today?"

 

"Helena, please."

 

"Helena. What are you doing here? Why am I interviewing you, when everything about your resume tells me you sit about ten points above _my_ pay scale?"

 

At this point, Helena thinks, there's probably no harm in the truth. Whatever happens next, she won't be walking out of here with an offer and a start date.

 

"The fact is," she says, "despite the CV that you find so impressive, I've been utterly unable to find work since I got to this city. I've been to God knows _how_ many interviews just like this one, in offices just like yours, and yes - quite a few of them for more senior positions than the one we've been discussing today. I've shaken hands with more Board Directors over the last month than in the decade before it. Believe me when I tell you that I have _pressed_ _the flesh_. But not a single job offer has come my way, not one. I have an apparently unbreakable twelve-month lease on a flat in Russian Hill, and I have a pile of bills on my kitchen table that grows larger every time I look at it. Going back to London isn't a possibility. So here I am, and here we are today. Does that answer your question?"

 

"I don't get it," says the girl. "Not one offer? Nothing? It makes no sense."

 

Well, thinks Helena: in for a penny, in for a pound.

 

"I've been blackballed," she says finally.

 

"Blackballed?"

 

"Bad-mouthed. Maligned. Professionally discredited."

 

"By who? An old boss?"

 

"I would imagine so, yes. Likely the senior Director at my previous agency."

 

"In London?"

 

"In London."

 

"What did you _do_?" asks the girl. "You must have really pissed him off, right?"

 

" Yes. I'd say so."

 

"I'm guessing there's a story there."

 

"Would telling it help me secure this position?"

 

"Probably not," the girl concedes. "But I'd like to hear it anyway."

* * *

 

Pushing through the wide glass doors that spill her out onto the pavement, Helena reaches into her pocket for her phone.

 

"Charles? It's me. Yes, I do know - it's 4 o'clock here. Are you in bed? This is an early night for you, isn't it?"

 

On the street beside her, what looks like a tow-truck accelerates loudly up a hill and off into the distance. Seconds later a police car speeds past in pursuit, black and white as a thickset zebra. She keeps walking, left hand half-covering the phone's mouthpiece.

 

"What? No, just a siren somewhere. Nothing to worry about. Look, Charles - I need you to do me a favour..."

 

A bearded man, cross-legged in the doorway, reaches out for her ankle as she passes a coffee shop. She keeps walking, away from doors and doorways and reaching hands.

 

"That boy from university, the Welsh one, William something ... Wollcott? Woolly, that's the one. Did you happen to mention a while ago that he was here? In San Francisco?"

 

She sidesteps quickly to the right, narrowly avoiding a suspiciously organic-looking brown pile on the curb.

 

"I was hoping I might be able to look him up, that's all. Perhaps a drink, I don't know. Didn't you say he did something in architecture? Building or planning, something like that?"

 

A vast white gull, wings spread, dive-bombs into a rubbish bin not six inches in front of her. She swears into the phone before she can stop herself.

 

"What? No, nothing. Just a seagull. The birds here are the size of _cats_."

 

The gull emerges from the bin, half-eaten burger clasped in its enormous beak, and takes to the sky. She finds herself nostalgic, suddenly, for London pigeons.

 

"What? Oh. That's disappointing. In that case, do give him my love when you see him."

 

"No, Charles, I'm not getting desperate. It would just have been nice to have seen a friendly face. What? Artie? Good God, you can't mean Artie _Nielsen_?"

 

"Yes, I do remember him. "Uncle" is a bit of a stretch, though, isn't it? He can't be more than fifty. And I’m certain he’s more of a second cousin.”

 

"No, I hadn't thought to call him. Why would I call him? _How_ would I call him? I haven't seen him in decades."

 

"Of course I've _heard_ of it! I can probably see the building from here, in fact."

 

She squints into the distance, and there it is: squat and onyx, small by the standards of some of the other buildings in the financial district but vividly recognisable, the silver Warehouse logo balanced on the spiked roof like an antenna.

 

"I don't think so, Charles, no. Because I don't know him. And the memories I _do_ have of him are quite honestly unflattering."

 

"Yes, tomorrow - another agency. A start-up. You never know with these things, do you? But yes, I'm keeping my fingers crossed."

 

"What? No, I don't want... I can't imagine he'd even remember who I am!"

 

"Fine. Fine. Text me his details. I'll think about it. But probably not.”

* * *

 

A week later, and she's sitting at the 29th floor of the Warehouse building, perched on a waiting room sofa shaped like a sherbet fountain.

 

"He shouldn't be long," says the receptionist. "He's in with the board, but they'll be finishing up soon."

 

The 'meeting,' Helena gathers, is not a happy one. She can hear the shouting even through the thick wood of double doors, most of it from Artie. His voice, she notices, hasn't changed much in twenty years. The West Country farmer's burr she remembers has given way to a West Coast drawl, but it's the same intonation, the same sharpness on the syllables that always made him sound so perennially exasperated.

 

There's a soft muffled thump from the conference room, then a light rhythmic tapping. She imagines a large folder thrown against a wall, a picture frame rattling.

 

"Don't worry," she says. "I'm happy to wait."

* * *

 

"What is it you want?" says Artie. His face is less red and his mouth less contorted than the moment immediately after she was ushered into his office, but he still looks like a man on the verge of a heart attack. She wants to reach out and loosen his tie, to release some of the pressure she imagines building up around his neck.

 

"Want?" she asks softly, biting back any hint of challenge in the response. His anger, she thinks, is dissipated but not entirely spent, and she'd prefer not to antagonise him with a wayward inflection.

 

"I'm assuming that you want something from me."

 

"Why would you assume that? I thought, since I was in the city, that it might be nice to see you. To catch up."

 

"I haven't seen you since you were twelve years old, Helena. What could we possibly have to catch up on?"

 

"Fifteen. I was fifteen when you last came to see us."

 

"Twelve, fifteen... What's the difference? You were a kid, and I haven't seen you since. So why are you here? No, wait - don't tell me. It's your mother, isn't it? She's after more money. Or your brother, what's his name? Jim?"

 

"Charles. But in both cases, no. Although Charles was kind enough to pass on your email address. Or rather, your secretary's."

 

"Then what? I don't have time to sit around here playing guessing games. Get to the point."

 

She sits up a little straighter in her seat and tries to project some image of dignity.

 

"A job," she says. "I was hoping that you might be able to help me in finding a job."

 

This, at least, throws him sufficiently off-balance to silence him, temporarily.

 

"Why would you need a job?" he asks eventually. "Aren't you some sort of superstar inventor?"

 

"Product designer."

 

"Product designer, inventor, whatever. I've seen you - you were all over the news a couple of years back with that GPS climbing hook thing, the one that guy took up El Capitan. What was it called?"

 

"The Grappler."

 

"Grappler, right. That's what I mean - you make l stuff. You invent stuff. You definitely don't need me to give you a job."

 

"Find me a job. And actually, I do. I've found getting hired somewhat challenging since I've been here. I can only blame the job market."

 

"Then go back to London! You don't need to be here, Helena."

 

"That isn't entirely... possible. At the moment. Or desirable."

 

"Why wouldn't you...? Oh my God, wait! Wait a minute!"

 

Realisation dawns, and he smiles, his still-red face a picture of glee.

 

"You were engaged to that woman, the journalist! That guy's daughter, what's his name?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Sir something. Sir John? The furniture store guy! I remember now, we got the wedding invite from your mother! Had it sitting in my tray for a month."

 

"Yes, him. And her."

 

"But you didn't marry her."

 

"It appears not, no."

 

He stops, thinks. For a minute he looks almost sympathetic.

 

"So you screwed up. And ran away."

 

"'Screwed up' is a harsh assessment. But it's certainly fair to say that there have been professional repercussions that I hadn't anticipated. John's contacts are... extensive, even in the US. Nowhere back home will touch me. And obviously I had to leave Pemrose."

 

"What's that, something to do with your old job?"

 

"My old agency. Part of the AquaLight Group."

 

"That's his company, right? Sir John whateverhisname's?"

 

"Yes."

 

"So you pissed him off, and ran away to San Francisco, and now you can't get hired. Is that about the size of it?"

 

"In a nutshell, yes."

 

"And you know _I_ can't hire you?"

 

"Why not? I learn quickly, and as you've pointed out, I'm very accomplished. There are many things I can turn my hand to when the need arises."

 

"We're an ad agency, Helena! What would you even do here? We generate ideas. We don't _make_ anything, not the way that you mean. And I'm sorry, but you're a little old for our trainee programme."

 

"Please, Uncle Artie."

 

" _Uncle_ Artie? Jesus Christ, Helena, _Uncle_? It sounded ridiculous enough when you were a kid, let's not go there now."

 

"Artie, then. Please, Artie."

 

"Alright. Alright. No begging. I can't deal with begging."

 

He picks up the phone on his desk and presses a button.

 

"Claire, can you speak to someone from Human Resources about a new hire? This afternoon, please. Yes, through me. But I need you to deal with it, alright? Thanks. I'll send her down."

 

Helena tries not to think about the conversation she'll be having with Charles later.

 

"Thank you, Artie," she says. "I appreciate it."

 

"This isn't a permanent arrangement. I need you to know that."

 

"My lease expires in November. I'll be gone before you know it."

 

"And I wouldn't hold out any expectations. I have no idea where our HR people will put you."

 

"It's a stopgap, that's all. Just a stopgap, until everything blows over."

 

"And that's all it is. I'm doing you a favour here, Helena."

 

There's a timid knock, and the receptionist appears in the doorway.

 

"They're ready for you downstairs, Mr. Nielsen," she says, avoiding eye contact with both of them.

 

Artie stands, tightens his strangulating tie, gestures for Helena to get up from her chair.

 

"Don't fuck this up," he says as they leave. “I really don’t need the publicity.”

* * *

 

The lift is glass, completely transparent on all sides. It's a long way down from the 29th floor, and Helena, who's fortnight and fearless in so many other arenas, who spends three nights a week every week in the dojo tackling men twice her size and three times her skill level, who invented The Grappler for the very purpose of scaling mountains - she doesn't do well with heights.

 

She pushes the button for the lobby, looks down at the floor and waits. A second later, she closes her eye.

 

The lift slides and shifts; she feels the descent in her stomach, in the soles of her feet. Three, perhaps four floors pass, and then it stops abruptly. She hears the doors glide open, footsteps step inside.

 

She keeps her eyes closed, conscious of the great glass drop below, but moves - she hopes discreetly - to a corner of the car.

 

"Excuse me?" she hears.

 

She opens her eyes. There's a woman directly in front of her - a very tall, very wide-eyed, very attractive woman, her brows furrowed and forehead creased.

 

"Yes?" says Helena.

 

She looks ahead, the woman's (really quite lovely) face preferable to the view from the lift. She smiles, she hopes conveying friendliness and not acrophobic anxiety.

 

"I need..." says the woman, hesitant.

 

"Yes?" says Helena again.

 

She wonders momentarily if something might be wrong, if the (really _very_ attractive) woman might need help, if some intervention on her part might be necessary.

 

Or, less virtuously, whether this might be one of _those_ moments, one of _those_ lift encounters.

 

And if it is, whether the woman might be persuaded to wait a moment or two before moving things forward, until they're closer to the ground.

 

"The button," says the woman, gesturing impatiently at Helena. "It's behind you. I need to get to it."

 

This is not, after all, one of _those_ lift encounters.

 

"I'm so, so sorry," says Helena, apologetic Englishness tumbling from her as she moves clear of the unwittingly-blocked panel. "I didn't see where I was standing."

 

"You didn't see?" says the woman, sceptically. She leans forward, pushes a button. The doors close, and the lift moves downwards.

 

"I had my eyes closed."

 

"Okay."

 

"I'm a little afraid of heights."

 

A corner of the woman's mouth rises, just a little, in what could be amusement.

 

"Is this your first time in an elevator?" she asks.

"You would think, wouldn't you?" says Helena. "But no. Although it is my first time in this one. Not that this is by any means the most terrifying in which I've found myself. It's actually rather benign by some standards. Have you ever come across a paternoster lift, for example? Absolutely terrifying. It literally doesn't stop. You have to hop on and off as it moves."

 

The cart stops again; the doors open.

 

"I take it back," says the woman as she walks through them. "Your elevator knowledge puts mine to shame."

 

She's definitely smiling, this time.

 

The doors close. Helena moves back against the safety of the wall.

 

But she keeps her eyes open on the way down.


	2. Resources

The Human Resources floor is wide and grey and partitioned, a labyrinth of desk and plasterboard. There are no doors, no offices - just tops of heads and feet and ankles, poking out where cubicles end.

 

"Hotdesking," says the manager. "It's a real space-saver."

 

"I can imagine," says Helena carefully. "And everything is shared? Nobody has their own space?"

 

"That's right," he says, proud smirk expanding his already-spherical head into something closer to a rugby ball. "It's great for productivity, too. Get here early, you get a desk; get here late, and you're down in the basement all day."

 

"In the basement?"

 

"Lower ground floor. Pete will show you when he gives you the tour."

 

He beckons to a younger man in an opposite cubicle, who unfolds slowly from his seat and ambles across to them, a bear claw dangling between his fingers.

 

"This is Pete. He'll be easing you in this first week."

 

"Good to meet you," says Pete, transferring the pastry from fingers to mouth and extending a hand that's nearly all knuckle.

 

It's his second bear claw of the morning, she discovers as he walks her across the department floor. He also has a pack of M&Ms in his trouser pocket, a party size bag of Doritos in his rucksack and an emergency half-pack of doughnuts hidden in a tea caddy in the HR kitchen.

 

("You gotta move 'em around, though. Not even the really good hiding places stay hidden long").

 

"You must have hollow legs," she says, following him into a corridor and down a flight of stairs.

 

"Just feeding the machine," he grins. "Besides, I do a lot of running around on the job."

 

"What is it exactly that you do?"

 

"Organisational efficiency development."

 

She mentally appraises the title, then the individual words. Deconstructs then, rearranges them for clarity, but comes no closer to teasing out their meaning.

 

"I'm sorry, I don't actually have any idea what that is. Is it something to do with sacking people?"

 

"With what, now?"

 

"Firing them. Making them redundant."

 

"Oh, man! Definitely not. I could not handle that."

 

"Then what?"

 

"It's making them work harder, I guess. Or smarter. Something like that."

 

"But you're not absolutely sure?"

 

He pauses on the stairwell to offer her an M&M.

 

"This place is a zoo," he says. "Nobody knows what they're doing. Six months ago, there were 400 of us here, and they leased the rest of the building to some e-sports guys and a law firm. Then the New York and Chicago offices got closed, and they moved everybody out here - some of you guys too, English guys, from Leeds or Manchester or somewhere like that. Now there's 2000 of us. There are so many, they had to split the company 5 ways. It's not just Warehouse anymore, not just advertising. It's Warehouse Digital, Warehouse Retail, Warehouse Insight. And Warehouse People, which I guess is us. Hell if I know, though. My job didn't exist until a month ago. I got transferred here out of Account Management. I'm used to taking clients out for a beer after the game, not telling market research ladies how many pens they should be using or what kind of chair they should be sitting in."

 

"Artie didn't mention any of this when I spoke to him last week."

 

"Who?"

 

"Artie. Nielsen. Your boss. Mine too now, I suppose."

 

"Artie Nielsen? You know him?"

 

"He's my uncle. In a roundabout sort of way."

 

"That explains it! That's why none of us had heard of you. He got you the job?"

 

"Yes."

 

She should probably feel some shame at this revelation of her nepotism - especially if, as she suspects, Artie is more tyrant than benign company figurehead. But Pete's grinning at her again, amused but good-natured, and she finds it impossible to stay embarrassed.

 

"What?" she asks.

 

"I bet you don't even know what the job is, do you? What you're supposed to be doing here?"

 

"Honestly, no. Not a clue. I assumed something in one of the creative departments? I have a background in design."

 

He actually laughs aloud at this, wide palms slapping at his trouser-leg.

 

"Oh, this is gonna be fun," he says eventually. "Come on – there are some things I need to show you."

 

\---------------

 

"I'm supposed to be spying on people? That's what this is?"

 

"Don't think of it as spying. It's more like... observation. Anthropology."

 

"It's completely unethical! Not to say disgusting! Look at where we are, for God's sake!"

 

They're huddled for privacy in a stall in a unisex bathroom on the 15th floor. The bathroom has been mercifully empty thus far, but Helena holds out little hope of it remaining so indefinitely.

 

"You wouldn't be based in here, obviously. We'd put you in empty cubicles, keep moving you around the hotdesks."

 

"To watch people."

 

"Observe them. It's just data-gathering."

 

"On what? Who's sleeping with their line manager? How many cookies Karen from Accounting stole from the meeting room last week? This is madness."

 

"It's not sex. Or food, although I would like to know more about that cookie thing. It's about productivity."

 

"Making people work harder. Or possibly smarter."

 

"That's it. That's exactly it."

 

"So I'll be doing... what?"

 

"Observing. Making notes. Seeing how many bathroom breaks people are taking. When they're eating lunch, when they're making phone calls, when they're having coffee. When they're working hardest, basically, versus when they're in a slump."

 

"And will you be joining me on this reconnaissance mission?"

 

He looks moderately horrified at the suggestion.

 

"Me? No. But I'll be using the data you give me, for sure."

 

"To fire people?"

 

"To help them! Help them work better. Help them build a happier, healthier workplace environment."

 

"We may have known each other only an hour, but I feel confident that that last sentence isn't something you would say unprompted. Did you find it in a handbook?"

 

"Come on, Helena. It's for a good cause. And it could be kind of fun, couldn't it?"

 

"In what way 'fun'"?

 

"Watching people. Seeing what they do."

 

"You mean observing them?"

 

"Right, observing. And we'd get to work together! Which I know you already know would be an awesome time."

 

"Would I be based here, on this floor?"

 

"To start with. We could do, like, a pilot study here. Then if it went well, we could roll it out across some other places, some other parts of the business."

 

"And where would we meet, to discuss the findings of this study? I'm reticent to have this bathroom become our secondary office."

 

"We'll go to the basement. It's always empty anyway - it's freakin' cold down there."

 

"It sounds delightful."

 

"Was that a yes?"

 

"Fine. Yes. But I won't actively lie to anyone."

 

"You won't have to, I promise. Now, do you want to go get something to eat?"

 

\--------------- 

 

They pick sandwiches from the staff canteen and eat them outside, cross-legged on the stretch of grass and geometric concrete that separates the Warehouse building from the street beyond. A hundred other people have the same idea, and it's music-festival crowded, but it's a warm day (she's yet to experience a truly cold one in California), and the novelty of sunshine on her skin in early February remains. Pete is barefoot, toes flexing in the harbour breeze.

 

("Who'd want to wear shoes outside on a day like this, right? It's bad enough we have to wear 'em in the office").

 

"You know one of the other fun things about this job?" he says, biting into bread and lettuce, chicken and mustard. "The access. Totally unlimited snooping potential."

 

She tries, and fails, to seem scandalised.

 

"What kind of access are we talking about?" she asks. "Should I be concerned for my privacy?"

 

"Personnel files. All of 'em, basement to boardroom. Not yours," he adds hurriedly. "You're kind of an unknown - you just appeared. Everyone else, though. Literally, everyone."

 

"And again I say, isn't that wildly unethical?"

 

"Not if you don't do anything with it. Its not like I'm gonna blackmail anyone or hold them to ransom. It's just fun to have it, you know? Like I'm a CIA agent or something. And it's not like it's serious information I'm looking at - I'm not wiretapping phones or hacking your email or anything."

 

"And still, it sounds like an intrusion."

 

"It's only what's on the employee database already. Marital status, where you went to college, how you did on your SATs. Nothing heavy."

 

"Medical history?"

 

"Uh-uh. That's the line in the sand, right there. Do not cross. Besides, it's on another database. Different passwords."

 

"I'm not sure how I feel about this. Or indeed about you telling me this."

 

"Relax! It's just the fun stuff, I swear. Here, let me prove it to you. Pick a person."

 

He wiggles his toes towards the lunchtime crowd.

 

"This is ridiculous."

 

"Come on, pick one. And make it a good one. Like Daddy Bear over there."

 

He gestures towards a chubby, bald man with braces and a waxed walrus moustache.

 

"Alright. Him."

 

"Senior planner on the Jubilee account. Divorced. Three times, if you can believe that. BA in Literature from Sarah Lawrence, but says he's got a Wharton MBA."

 

"How do you know that?"

 

"I got stuck in line behind him at a company dinner last fall. Spent 10 minutes listening to him trying to hook up with one of the waitresses. Pick another."

 

She scans the crowd.

 

"That man beside the statue," she says. "Grey hair and a pocket square."

 

"Now he actually is a Wharton MBA. Married with kids, but funny story..."

 

Another, more familiar face drifts into her line of vision. Curly dark hair, wide mouth, startled green eyes. Long lean body sitting back against a bench, head bent into a book. For a second Helena loses her breath.

 

"Her," she says, pointing towards the bench.

 

"Her? That's Myka Bering. She's on the board - Group Creative Director, something like that."

 

"She's very young for a Board Director."

 

"Started here straight out of college as a copywriter. She's your Uncle Artie's right-hand man."

 

"I wouldn't have imagined that."

 

"You know her?"

 

"We met, very briefly. In an elevator."

 

"That must have been... Oh. Oh! You met her, met her. Gotcha."

 

He looks encouragingly at Helena.

 

"That's really great."

 

"I am of course delighted that you think so."

 

"You should go talk to her."

 

"We "met" for all of 3 minutes. Half of which I spent trying not to think about plummeting to my death. And talking to her may not be wise, if she's as close to Artie as you say. He was very clear when he offered me this job about the limits of his patience for my "fucking it up" - and I believe he might very well construe my hitting on his board members as a fuck up."

 

"Nah. Not if you do it right. And Uncle Artie doesn't need to know. It's not as if he tells you everyone he's stepping out with, right?"

 

"He tells me absolutely nothing. Before last week, I hadn't seen him in twenty years. He's my mother's second cousin, barely a relative."

 

"There you go. No obligation."

 

"Although my understanding was that he was still married."

 

"He is, I think. Doesn't stop him, though, not if you believe the rumours."

 

"Which evidently you do."

 

"Forget about Artie. Go talk to the pretty girl."

 

She weighs it up, cycling through every model of cost-benefit analysis that might justify what she's about to do. That might frame it as anything other than a disastrous office romance waiting to happen, another set of unintended consequences.

 

And she stands up, prepares to walk towards the bench and Myka Bering.

 

Who closes her book, picks up her jacket and walks back into the building.

 

"Maybe next time, then," says Pete, patting her on the shoulder.

 

\---------------

 

Helena's studio in Russian Hill is more workshop than living space. There's a bed and a bathroom and a kitchenette, but the remainder of the flat is given over to tools and materials, a copper floor lamp and a drawing table half-covered with sketches and flash drives. The curtains and floorboards are dark and heavy, better suited to the 19th century than the 21st.

 

She works mainly in the evenings, losing herself in the designs until she can't physically stay awake. She manages perhaps four hours of sleep a night, but it's enough, and the white noise that settles on her as she plans and draws is soothing, staving off those thoughts she'd rather keep at bay.

 

Tonight she barely sleeps at all, hands moving unconsciously over paper, imagining new dimensions, new parameters.

 

For the last few days, she's been working on an outline of a new-model exoskeletal glove for climbing, a sort of companion piece for The Grappler. The idea is there, but without access to the necessary software she anticipates that it might be weeks, even months before she arrives at a working prototype.

 

Tonight, though, she's abandoned the glove.

 

Tonight, for reasons she'd rather not interrogate, she begins a new project: a pencil sketch outline of a fast-moving elevator. A bullet train of an elevator – with a pressurised cabin and opaque walls and just about room for two.


	3. Whiskey & Chocolate

"So," asks Pete excitedly, "what did you find out?"

 

They're face to face at a table in the centre of the basement, another open-plan sea of marigold paint and not-quite-Bauhaus furniture. This one is startlingly unoccupied, empty of everything but printer ink and unplugged power cables. It's cold, as Pete had suggested, but it's a perfect backdrop for subterfuge.

 

"There is nothing to report," says Helena.

 

"What? You've been up there a week! There's gotta be something."

 

"There is not. And I have looked."

 

"Nobody did anything? The entire time you've been there?"

 

"They worked. They ate lunch, between the designated hours of 12 and 2. They chatted a little amongst themselves, though not so frequently as you'd imagine, I suspect because many of them still barely know one another. There was a single complaint, about the erratic workings of the hot chocolate machine, but I'm loath to characterise it as a human resources issue."

 

"From Judy, right? Red-haired lady with the cats?"

 

"She has some unexpectedly strong opinions about beverage dispensing. And cats, of course, which I assume also fall beyond our purview."

 

"She's not wrong about the hot chocolate, though. There's a better machine on the 25th, you should check it out."

 

"I'll pass that along to Judy."

 

"Did you try to talk to anybody?"

 

"And compromise my position as impartial observer? No. Although, Judy aside, I was able to pick up a few conversational snippets here and there."

 

"What about?"

 

"I thought we were helping, not spying?"

 

"It could be useful. How am I supposed to deal with their problems if I don't know what they are?"

 

"I doubt many of them have been here long enough to have problems, as such."

 

"Come on, you gotta give me something. What were they talking about?"

 

"Alright. Several of them mentioned someone named Mrs. Frederic. No first name. There was some speculation as to whether she might come to San Francisco."

 

"I've been sort of wondering that myself."

 

"You know her?"

 

"Do I know her? She's the CEO. Irene Frederic."

 

"Isn't Artie the CEO?"

 

"He's head of West Coast operations - which is most of Warehouse now, I guess. But Mrs. Frederic's the one who set up the company."

 

"And she's not here, in the city?"

 

"Not yet. She's in Texas, at the Austin office. Though we all figured she'd be showing up here eventually, what with the mergers."

 

"What's she like? Compared to Artie, for example."

 

"Kind of scary. And mysterious. Really intense eyes. Wears a lot of shoulder pads."

 

"She sounds like Margaret Thatcher."

 

"Man, I totally see that! She's definitely got an Iron Lady thing going on. Not politically, though. She's a big Democrat, always at fundraisers. Writes a column for the Post, I think."

 

"I'll look out for it."

 

"I tell you, if she does show up... That's gonna be interesting. Could mean a lot more changes on the way around here.”

 

He delves into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out an unwrapped Oreo. Sniffs it, and takes a bite.

 

"Anyway," he says, "we need to talk strategy. For you. Find a way to get you to the good stuff."

 

"I'm still not sure that I'm clear on what "the good stuff" is in this context."

 

"Sub-optimal working patterns. Impediments to productive task engagement."

 

"That's the handbook talking again, isn't it?"

 

"Help me out here."

 

"I can say only that I will keep trying. But be prepared for future updates to be leaner even than this one. It's only a matter of time before the vending machine repairman makes it to the 15th floor. More to the point, I am beginning to lose my mind up there."

 

"Look, H.G..."

 

He stops, mid-sentence, the letters hanging in the air between them.

 

"What did you call me?"

 

"What? Nothing."

 

"You said "H.G." Very clearly."

 

He looks away guiltily.

 

"Which means, I assume, that you know my middle name. Which, since I have yet to tell you my middle name, means in turn that you have found a way to access my personnel records."

 

"Okay, yes," he says. "Sorry."

 

"And were they suitably tantalising? Did you find your fill of salacious details?"

 

"What? No! It was just the boring stuff, you know? Basic work history, birthdate, that kind of thing."

 

"Birthdate?"

 

"Oh shit. Sorry."

 

"Well," she says eventually. "I doubt there was anything too incriminating in there. Can we perhaps move past it?"

 

"Sure. Yes. Sorry."

 

"And please stop apologising. I can’t cope with you looking so cowed."

 

He pulls another Oreo from his pocket.

 

"So," he says. "George?"

 

"As in Eliot. My mother is a fan of the Victorians."

 

"I actually don't know who that is. But H.G. Wells? That's pretty awesome. Does anyone call you H.G.?"

 

"Literally no-one."

 

"Mind if I do?"

 

"Very much, yes."

 

\--------

 

The hot chocolate machine on the 25th floor, she discovers, amply deserves its reputation for efficiency. It's also pleasantly secluded, tucked into an alcove that gives at least the illusion of privacy.

 

After a week of Judy and her cats, of Bob the data analyst and his enthusiasm for Coldplay, the seclusion is a sweet relief, a cold compress against the forehead. Here she can breathe.

 

She sips slowly at the lukewarm liquid, drawing out time.

 

"Hello again," she hears, and she's turned only half-around when she sees that it's Myka Bering standing behind her, a five dollar bill at the ready.

 

"Hello," she says. Then, "I'm sorry, did you want to use this?"

 

"That's kind of why I'm here, so yes."

 

"And once again, I'm blocking your path."

 

She sidesteps away, paper cup in hand.

 

"I'm just waiting for you to hit me with some chocolate trivia," says Myka, smiling.

 

It really is a very lovely smile, Helena thinks, all creases and warm elasticity.

 

"Lifts are really more my area, I'm afraid."

 

"Of course, I should have known. I actually googled that paternoster thing you mentioned. Looks like quite a ride."

 

"More of a descent into hell, from my perspective."

 

"It turns out that there are even more elaborate elevators out there. There's one in Berlin that's basically a giant aquarium."

 

"I assume the fish are not directly inside the carriage?"

 

"More like just outside, I think. In a kind of floating aquatic sleeve wrapped around it."

 

"I wonder how they filter the water?"

 

"I couldn't tell you. It was quite a cursory google."

 

"I may have to find out."

 

"It's an important question. I'd expect nothing less from an elevator specialist."

 

"I must tell you that I do actually have some chocolate-themed trivia to hand."

 

"I'm ready. Is it better or worse than an elevator that looks like a fish tank?"

 

"Infinitely better."

 

"Bring it on, then."

 

"Here we go, then. Did you know that until only a century or two ago, chocolate was widely understood as medicine? The Spanish and the Italians would use it to treat liver disease."

 

"That's a little disappointing."

 

"Is it?"

 

"Not the medicine thing - the quality of your trivia. That's chocolate history 101."

 

"For a chocolatier, perhaps."

 

"Or for someone who's worked on three different candy accounts this year. You need to up your game."

 

"Evidently so."

 

"Here's a tip: all the really good chocolate stories are about sex. Not liver disease."

 

"Are they?"

 

"Historically, yes. You've got the Aztecs declaring it an aphrodisiac, Casanova using it like Cialis... You've even got a group of 18th nuns banned from drinking it because the bishops thought it got them too worked up."

 

"Incredible. You are a wellspring of chocolate miscellany."

 

"You should try me on vitamins. We'd be here all day."

 

Helena isn't sure how long they've been looking at each other as they talk; only that she doesn't want to stop. And that it's easy, this back-and-forth. Easy, and frightening.

 

"Would you...," she says, unclear even as she begins how she'll end the sentence.

 

"Myka! Thank God."

 

A very tall blond man barges into the alcove, face shiny behind thick-framed glasses.

 

"I've been trying to call you," he says. "We need you in the conference room, now. Janus are on the line."

 

"One second, Ron," she tells the man.

 

"I'm sorry," she says to Helena. "I need to..."

 

"Of course," says Helena. "Go and do whatever it is you need to do."

 

"We'll catch up soon," says Myka, and then she's gone, racing off towards a set of double doors at the far end of the corridor.

 

Later, Helena emails Pete to let him know that, yes: the hot chocolate machine on the 25th really _is_ better.

 

\--------

 

When her initial happiness at the encounter dissipates, Helena is left shaken: anxious, and untethered, and less inclined even than before to return to the stifling sound and motion of the 15th floor.

 

She needs, she thinks, somewhere entirely calm to gather herself - stillness, and silence, and a door that she can close.

 

There are very few doors in this new, open-plan iteration of the Warehouse building, where space is at a premium, where public work takes such firm physical precedence over private. But evidently there are _some_ , and _some_ \- the possibility of any at all - is enough to encourage her to look.

 

She finds what she needs two floors down: a small shuttered office both unoccupied and unlocked. It shows moreover little evidence of ever having been occupied: no computer, no photographs on the desk, not even a pack of chewing gum in the drawers.

 

It's empty, and it's perfect.

 

She settles into the chair (a four-wheeled feat of ergonomic artistry) and relaxes, closing her eyes. With only a little effort she can imagine herself back in her old life, at her old desk, professionally autonomous again - diary full but manageable, daily schedule dictated not by someone else's whims but by the needs of a project, of a necessary job. This woman, she thinks, this woman whom she was (and whom perhaps she might become again) – this woman would have confidence. This woman, upon meeting someone like Myka Bering at a meeting, or a client's office – this woman would be a peer, an equal.

 

This _other_ woman, this woman whom she actually _is_ (at least in this moment) - she is less impressive.

 

And even when there's chemistry, the kind of chemistry that (perhaps) might prove itself a minor revelation... Even then, this other woman is a harder sell.

 

When the phone on the desk rings and she reaches over to answer it, she's on autopilot - one foot in a recent past in which she might easily have _called_ and _been called_ at her own office, her opinion sought on something more significant than drinks machines and lunch break habits.

 

"Hello?" she says, before she even thinks to stop herself.

 

"Emily! You got here!" says a man's voice from the other end of the line. The accent is lilting East Coast and cigarette-inflected, a musical Harvey Fierstein croak.

 

"I'm sorry, I..."

 

"Hey, don't apologise, honey! I'm just glad you made it. We've been waiting a month for you to jump on board."

 

"What do you… What can I do for you?"

 

"The designs, Emily. Did you look at them yet?”

 

“I’m afraid I didn’t,” she says solemnly.

 

“We sent them across as an attachment, did you not get the email? Could be we got the wrong address - everything's been ass-over-tit here too, the merger's got everyone all fucked up. Wait a second, let me check what I got."

 

She hears typing and clicking, fingers tapping across mouse and keyboard.

 

"E.Lake@warehouse - is that right? I got the attachment right here, I can resend it if you want."

 

"I'm...not sure," she says carefully.

 

"I was just the same when they changed mine over. Stuff kept going to the wrong address, took me two days to work out that nobody was mailing me. Don't worry about it, honey. Go speak to the IT guys, they'll sort it out for you."

 

"I'll certainly do that."

 

\--------

 

_"What do you know about an Emily Lake?" she'll ask Pete later._

_"Name sounds familiar. Is she one of the London transfers? Wait, let me check."_

_Then:_

_"Got her right here - Emily Lake, Design Strategy Director, UK. Due to come over with the Manchester guys but took a sabbatical, kind of last minute by the looks of it. Requisition only came in last week. She should get here in... looks like ... 8 weeks from now."_

_"That's a long sabbatical."_

_"I guess they were doing it to keep her. She's kind of a hotshot. Head of Strategic Services at Popcorn, 10 years client-side before that. And don't ask me about her paycheck, because it won't make either of us feel good."_

_"Interesting. Thank you."_

_"Why'd you want to know, anyway? Somebody been talking about her?"_

_"Something like that, yes."_

 

\--------

 

"Listen, Emily," says the voice on the phone. "I wouldn't normally chase you like this, and I get you just got there, I do, but we really need to get your input so we can move forward with the design routes for the Janus print launch."

 

"Janus?" asks Helena.

 

"They didn't give you the brief? I spoke to the boys in London last month and they swore up and down they'd shared it with you!"

 

"It sounds as if there's perhaps been some misunderstanding."

 

"I'll say. We need you to sign off on this, Emily. We've been working on it since Christmas. And we're seeing the client Friday."

 

"What are the options?" she says.

 

\--------

 

_Emily Lake, she'll discover, resists social media as fervently as Helena herself. She has a LinkedIn profile, but it's sparse and image-free. If she tweets, it's under a pseudonym._

_There are no contact details available across any of the platforms she investigates._

 

\--------

 

Just talking through the Janus query - even without seeing the designs - gives Helena a twinge of pleasure. She revels in the uncomplicated joy of it – of having a problem, of finding a solution.

 

Janus the product, she deduces from the conversation (and confirms with a search on her phone as they talk) is a prestige whiskey brand, one that promises to release the drinker's inner hedonist. Janus the manufacturer, she also learns, is among Warehouse's biggest clients, worth upwards of $80 million a year.

 

As she understands them, the designs represent two distinct reworkings of the established Janus bottle, reimagined for a print ad run in the Americas: one casting the bottle as short and squat, almost a bourbon, and the other taking visual cues from the teardrop shape of cognac.

 

It isn't a product design question, exactly, but it is (or it sounds to be) a straightforward one – a clear choice between rough-hewn and luxurious aesthetics, Old West and European luxury. For a premium whiskey, the way forward seems obvious, and she says so.

 

"Outstanding!" says the voice. "That's what we need, some gutsy decisions around here. Emily, let me talk to the team and get back to you. And have someone look at your email, okay? There's some other things I want to send you."

 

"Absolutely," says Helena.

 

\--------

 

By the following week, Emily Lake has a laptop, a new email password and a cactus on her desk, and Helena has an office on the 23rd floor.


	4. Invention

At first, she's Emily Lake in an exclusively digital capacity. She answers emails and makes very occasional telephone calls, giving feedback from a distance, mediating disputes between designers.

 

(For Pete's benefit, she prepares an entirely fabricated report on the correspondence between current Warehouse furniture and staff productivity levels - hypothesising links between spinal misalignment (precipitated by the sharp recline angles of existing office chairs) and excess coffee consumption, resulting in a net loss of desk-time. In the footnotes she makes suggestions on more posture-friendly seating options, at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars to the company).

 

The deception, she knows, is apt to end badly, in revelation and dismissal, possibly even some sort of legal action (although she's sufficiently assured of Artie's fear of bad publicity to wager against the latter).

 

It cannot possibly end well - how could it? Emily Lake - the _real_ Emily Lake - will be back, and she, Helena, will be exposed. She has finite time, and she feels it seeping away, moment-by-moment.

 

And still, she can't quite bring herself to stop. The pleasure of usefulness - of feeling like herself again, even temporarily - is too great, too overwhelming.

 

So she compromises. Manages the risk by reducing her visibility, her footprint. Responds, but doesn't instigate. Is heard, but not seen. She makes conscious, concerted efforts to avoid interactions with other Warehouse staff in person. Keeps her door firmly closed, her blinds drawn at all times.

 

The compromise soothes her; she reassures herself that, if she's doing this - and certainly she _is_ doing this - then the impact on others (except perhaps Emily Lake herself) will be minimal.

 

She'll do this, but she won't leave a trace.

 

\------------

 

The physical making of Emily Lake begins with a knock at her door, and a man with a crew cut.

 

"Hi," he says, the top half of his body sidling into the office. "Emily?"

 

"Yes," says Helena, hesitantly.

 

"Great! I'm Steve. Jinks. From Account Planning? I heard you got here."

 

"How can I help you, Steve?"

 

"There's a senior team meeting about to get going on the 26th. I thought you could sit in, maybe? Meet some of the other new guys? And the rest of us."

 

"I would love to," she says, "but I'm afraid I'm absolutely swamped this afternoon. You know how it is."

 

She wishes for piles of paper, manila folders, Post-It notes - some tangible evidence of this _swamping_. Instead there is traitorously clear desk space, and the orderly lines of her laptop.

 

"Are you sure? It should only be an hour or so. And Artie won't be there."

 

She does her best to look impassive at the mention of his name.

 

"Sorry," he says. "I guess you haven't met Artie yet. He's not really a meeting person. Anyway, what do you say?"

 

"Steve? Are you going up?"

 

Myka Bering's head joins Steve's in the doorway.

 

"On my way now. Just trying to persuade Emily here to come along. Myka, this is Emily Lake. From London."

 

"We've met," says Myka, smiling.

 

"Yes," says Helena.

 

The fewer words the better, she thinks. The fewer the words, the less elaborate the lie.

 

"Perfect," says Steve. "Then Myka can be the one to talk you through the new Janus brief. I tell you, _I_ don't understand it."

 

"We can run through it after the meeting," says Myka. "If you're coming?"

 

"Yes," says Helena again.

 

\---------

 

It's a housekeeping meeting, a kind she knows well. Twenty people around a table for an update on Warehouse business, new and current; Steve leading lists of targets and deliverables, clients and demands. There are no lengthy introductions or ice-breakers, to her relief; no quick few words on her favourite film or album, no role-playing exercises.

 

She recognises none of the other faces in the room, and none appear to recognise her.

 

Perhaps, she thinks, the media coverage of the Grappler launch wasn't quite so extensive or so wide-reaching as it had seemed at the time. Or perhaps it was simply that _she_ wasn't the memorable part of the proposition - not compared with the climbers, or even the device itself. A single man hanging from a cliff-face 3000 feet in the air by a metal claw undoubtedly made for an iconic image; less so a group shot of an industrial design team blinking into the camera lens from their workstations.

 

After the meeting, as the others are leaving, Myka stops her with a touch to the arm.

 

"Did you want to talk about Janus? My office is just down the hall."

 

"You really don't have to. You must be very busy, I'd be happy to get stuck into it another time."

 

"Now is perfect, actually. My 4.30 call was cancelled, so it's this or an afternoon dodging emails from Research about snail-flavour candy and pickled egg beer."

 

"Should I even ask?"

 

"A group of them just got back from fieldwork. They have a lot of new ideas."

 

"It's something else to add to your store of trivia, I suppose."

 

"Where do you think I get all my information? Books?"

 

Helena appreciates the intentional irony of this only when she enters Myka's office, where books cover almost every surface, almost every area of floor space. The books are old and new, hardback and soft cover, fiction and non-fiction. Scandinavian detective novels overlap with accounts of functional grammar and histories of the sugar trade, metaphysical poetry with manuals on typography. She is amused to see a copy of The Island Of Doctor Moreau half-wedged into the cushion of a corner sofa, then quickly realises that she ought not to be.

 

"It seems pointless to observe that you have many, many books," she says, treading lightly on an Aesop's Fables.

 

"I like to read."

 

"Omnivorously, I would say."

 

"It's all helpful stuff. You never know what kind of brief will come in. What might need looking into."

 

"Greta Garbo's face, for example," says Helena, pointing to a paperback lying text-up on the coffee table.

 

"Exactly. Or, you know... the Norwegian oil crisis. All equally relevant."

 

Helena tries, and immediately fails, to find this makeshift library - and the enthusiastic curiosity it signals - something other than desperately attractive.

 

"Why don't you sit down?" says Myka, gesturing to the sofa.

 

"Are you sure? I'd hate to displace The Wife Of Bath."

 

"She'll be fine. She's a tough woman."

 

"I wouldn't want to mess with her, certainly."

 

They're _looking_ at each other again.

 

"So, Janus?" says Helena eventually.

 

"Sure. Yes. What do you want to know?"

 

She's flustered, Helena thinks, and wants very badly to not understand what that might mean.

 

"At the moment I know virtually nothing - so anything you think might be of value."

 

"It's kind of a strange one. They want to build a flying machine."

 

"I'm sorry, a _flying_ machine? Like a glider?"

 

"Yes. Only not a glider - not any type of flying machine that's already out there. Something entirely different."

 

"Why?"

 

"It's for a new product launch. They've got this new spirit, a sort of whiskey-infused vodka. It's supposed to represent inventiveness, the power of imagination, that kind of thing."

 

"And they wish to demonstrate this inventiveness through the medium of flight?"

 

"By building a flying machine. And then, you know... flying it."

 

"And this is the project on which you're currently working?"

 

"Yes and no. It's the project on which I _should_ be working. But it's very, very far beyond my comfort zone."

 

"I have to say, it doesn't sound like an advertising problem."

 

"It isn't, not remotely. If anything it's an engineering problem. But they bought it to us, and Artie doesn't want to piss them off, so he said yes. And quite honestly, I have no idea what I'm going to do with it."

 

"You have a team of designers on hand, do you not? Someone must surely be able to do something."

 

"You would think. But so far, we're coming up empty."

 

"It's a challenge."

 

"I think Steve thought you might be able to help us. Once he knew you'd gotten here - Artie seemed to think you were trekking through the Amazon for the next couple of months."

 

"I'm here."

 

"Yes you are."

 

Myka holds her gaze, and Helena shifts back in her seat, dislodging Wide Sargasso Sea from the cushion behind her.

 

"I'll do what I can," she says.

 

"That would be... Well, that would be wonderful. We obviously wouldn't expect any direct client management, not while you're still finding your way around. But anything you can do for us behind the scenes would be kind of a miracle."

 

"I'll do my best."

 

"Thank you. Just, thank you."

 

"The results may be far from perfect."

 

"Have you ever come across anything like this before? Ever worked on this kind of project? I mean, not this _exact_ kind of project, obviously, because who's ever built a flying machine? I don't even really know what they _mean_ by "flying machine." But something even a little like it?"

 

"Something a little like it? Yes."

 

\------------

 

And so Emily Lake, ably supported by Helena Wells, comes to build a flying machine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The above isn't, of course, the first time Greta Garbo has found her way into a Bering & Wells story.
> 
> For a fuller glimpse of the face of Garbo (one that doesn't come by way of Roland Barthes), hats off to apparitionism's beautifully-written Studio - which is incidentally one of the fics that got me into the Warehouse 13 fandom in the first place.
> 
> I imagine the 19th-century-inventor-does-flying-machine idea has been done in many different places here - but the one that sticks in mind for me is another beautifully-done story by apparitionism, Flight.
> 
> I look forward to plugging other people's stories in subsequent chapters :)


	5. Lightning

Pete is unhappy. His soft eyes droop; his forehead wrinkles. It's so visible an unhappiness that she feels an irresistible urge to _do_ _something_ about it - to smooth it away, somehow iron it out of him.

 

"Can I get you a biscuit?" she asks. "I think I saw a pack of Nutter Butters on the counter over there."

 

"I don't get it," he says, glossing over the biscuits. "Why would someone do that?"

 

They're back in the basement, side-by-side on a high tabletop. His feet dangle sadly in the air, not quite touching the ground.

 

"I don't think it's intended to be insulting," she says. "More like... satire."

 

"But they had to know that someone here would see it."

 

"I wouldn't assume so. It's written anonymously. And whoever wrote it couldn't have predicated what would happen to it once it was out there in the ether."

 

In the last 48 hours, the postings of a wry industry blogger, an Unseen Adman, have made the pages of a number of national newspapers. The posts are neither shocking nor especially inflammatory, but contain in places insider allusions to Warehouse and its client-handling practices. Artie has read them, and has demanded immediate (though unspecified) action of several key department heads, who have in turn demanded it of Pete.

 

"He could be literally anybody here," he says. "There's no way of knowing. He could be Judy, or Tony from Payroll, or the catering guy. He could be _you_ , H.G."

 

"I believe we've already discussed my take on that nickname. And it most certainly is _not_ me. I don't _blog_."

 

"You know what I mean. How am I supposed to find out who's doing it? It's anonymous, that's the whole point - it's _in_ _disguise_."

 

"Honestly, I don't know. Even if blanket surveillance of every employee in the building were possible, it's surely more likely that whoever it is has been writing from home, not from a desk on the 19th floor."

 

"Sneaky. Clever, and sneaky."

 

"Just very basic self-preservation, I would say."

 

"So that's it. We've got nothing."

 

"I wouldn't say _nothing_. There may be clues within the text, for example."

 

"The text? What text?"

 

"In the content of the posts themselves. Some trace of personality. Some reference to a particular role within the company. I take it you’ve read them?"

 

"I've... skimmed them. Sort of."

 

"I would suggest going back and reading them closely. And then again, one by one, to see what can be gleaned."

 

"And you think that'll tell us who it is?"

 

"I think that there's a reasonable chance that it will give us _something_ , which would represent a demonstrable improvement on the _nothing_ we have currently."

 

He brightens.

 

"This, right here," he says. "This is why we should always work together. Your brains and my... other brains, Lattimer and Wells!"

 

"Wells and Lattimer," says Helena absently.

 

\------------

 

Back in Emily Lake's office, with an A3 pad and pencils brought from her apartment, Helena sketches.

 

She has, so far, ten possible iterations of the Janus flying machine laid out on paper. Some are explicitly historical - crane-like designs connoting early gliders and fin de siècle aviation. Others are consciously contemporary - electric-battery drones and aerial hovercraft inspired less by the practical necessities of flight than by the blue-energy narratives of science fiction. None feel quite right for these purposes.

 

It's past six and she's exploring variations on a pedal-powered ornithopter when Myka Bering appears in the doorway, a black canvas folder in her hand.

 

"I bought you these," she says, handing it across. "It's the stimulus from Janus - some images they wanted us to keep in mind as we start thinking though ideas for the machine."

 

Helena opens the folder and studies the printouts inside.

 

"These are... not wildly helpful," she says eventually.

 

"We couldn't do a lot with them."

 

"Am I missing something? They seem to be just... photographs of birds."

 

"That's right."

 

"And that one is... some sort of dragon?"

 

"We think it's Pete's Dragon. From the movie?"

 

"I see. So, in order to inspire us to design an entirely _new_ type of flying thing, they have sent us a portfolio of images of _existing_ things which fly, only some of which are objectively real?"

 

"Yes. Except the ostrich. That's kind of an outlier."

 

"I think, if you don't mind, that I may avoid factoring these into my thinking."

 

"That's probably sensible."

 

Myka walks towards the desk, towards Helena.

 

"Is this where you're up to?" she asks, gesturing towards the open sketch pad.

 

"So far. But I fear little overall progress has been made."

 

She leans over the desk to turn a page, brushing Helena's shoulder as she goes.

 

"These look pretty good to me."

 

"They don't _work_ , is the thing," says Helena, her breath irregular.

 

"They don't fly?"

 

"Certainly they'd fly - at least as I've been imagining them. But they lack spectacle."

 

"Are you sure about that? Because if I saw _this_ jetting off into the sky, I think I'd look twice."

 

She points to a half-finished sketch of a hot air balloon, basket flanked by stippled bat wings.

 

"For this machine," says Helena, "whatever it may turn out to be, you need a very particular combination of practicality and display value. My understanding from Steve is that Janus expects the final model to not only perform, to stay airborne, but to _dazzle_ , to visually delight. Which is where these designs fall flat - they've failed thus far to delight me. And I suspect I'm more easily engaged than the commuters on the Bay Bridge, or the Hudson, or whichever location they choose for the launch."

 

"So, what's your plan? To keep trying until you find one that _delights_ you?"

 

"Essentially, yes."

 

"You've made a pretty good start. There's a lot of technical detail in these.”

 

"Much of it speculative. I _think_ they'd fly, but I can't be certain of it. You'd need to run them past an engineer to be sure. I meant to ask, in fact: do you have one lined up for this?"

 

"Steve's talking to a couple right now. And a mechanic. Don't worry, we weren't planning on having you solder the panels yourself."

 

"I'm actually surprisingly competent with a soldering iron."

 

"Doesn't surprise me at all. You seem to have a lot of unexpected skills."

 

"Even if my chocolate trivia is lacking?"

 

"Not so much lacking as... elementary. Bare-bones. But not everyone can... Wait, are you okay?"

 

Helena follows Myka's line of vision down to her own hands. They're shaking.

 

"Ah," she says. "Low blood sugar. I may have forgotten to eat lunch."

 

"Because you were working?"

 

"In part, I suppose. I tend to lose track of time when I draw."

 

"You need to eat."

 

"And I absolutely will. I have one more sketch to finish, and then I'll head off home."

 

"I'm not sure you can be trusted to feed yourself. Let me take you to get something."

 

"I can assure you, I will be feeding myself amply once I leave here."

 

"Not good enough. Come on, get up; we're going to dinner."

 

\------------

 

The restaurant is small, dimly-lit, romantic, with few tables and fewer diners. There's a candle on the table, Latin ballads drifting down from the speakers. Helena doesn't trust herself to drink.

 

"So what else are you working on?" asks Myka, digging energetically into a plate of paella. The way she eats reminds Helena a little of Pete, and she entertains impossible visions of the two of them together, arguing over the last doughnut in the carton.

 

"What do you mean?" she says.

 

"What other projects are you on? Besides the Janus work."

 

"I'm...auditing at the moment. Reviewing past pitches, that kind of thing. They're easing me in gently."

 

"That doesn't sound like Warehouse."

 

Helena thinks for a moment; mines her insubstantial seam of Emily Lake data.

 

"They've been very accommodating of me," she says. "I think they were quite keen to get me over here, to the US."

 

"I'd heard that. You weren't with the London office long before you got here, were you?"

 

"Barely any time at all," she says, hoping that it's true.

 

"How are you finding California? Big transition?"

 

"Not quite so much as you'd think, actually. The weather is better, of course, and it's certainly prettier than some of the other places I've visited, but otherwise it's much the same as anywhere. A lot of very busy people and some thoroughly confusing traffic systems. And San Francisco is just as expensive as London, sadly."

 

"Had you been here before you moved?"

 

"To California? No. Though my father was born in Nevada."

 

"Vegas?"

 

"Reno," says Helena, immediately realising her slip. Could Emily Lake know Nevada? Or California, for that matter?

 

"That's... incongruous."

 

"Is it?"

 

"You're kind of the epitome of Englishness."

 

"Is that a compliment? We're a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to cultural export."

 

"More of an observation. But what do I know? I've never been to England."

 

"You should go. Though perhaps not in the winter."

 

"You think I can't handle the cold? I'm from Colorado."

 

"And Colorado is... cold?"

 

"It's not Alaska. But there's snow."

 

"And electricity, from what I remember. Something about lightning strikes?"

 

"Now _that's_ good trivia. Yes, we have a lot of lightning."

 

"Small wonder you escaped to the West Coast, then. Far fewer stray thunderbolts."

 

"That was obviously my core motivation."

 

"How long have you been here?"

 

"San Francisco? 10 years. Since after college, basically."

 

"You must like it a great deal."

 

"It's a little chaotic. And you're right, it's crazily expensive. Plus the seagulls here are bigger than vultures."

 

"You noticed that too?"

 

"But the views are incredible, and there are a lot of great bookstores - you can imagine how big a deal that is for me. And it's... easier, I guess."

 

"Easier?"

 

"To be out."

 

"Ah."

 

She wonders again what Emily Lake would make of this conversation.

 

"Was that... not a good thing to say?" says Myka eventually. "I'd assumed you might... know what I mean."

 

"It was an entirely appropriate thing to say. And you were quite right to assume. I can imagine it must be very much easier than in some other places. Not that I've been exactly out on the scene here since I arrived."

 

"Not a big bar person?"

 

"Not if I can help it. Perhaps I'm missing out?"

 

"I don't know that I'm qualified to give an opinion on that one. The women's cycling group that post flyers through my door look like they have a blast, if that helps."

 

"I'll keep that in mind. But I'd be more likely to be lured by a martial arts class."

 

"Like, karate?"

 

"Kenpo, generally. Although I haven't really been training since I got here."

 

"I'm not even going to pretend to know what that is."

 

"I think 'a bit like karate' will do for our purposes."

 

"Obviously I'll be looking it up later."

 

"Obviously. I expect you to have a thorough handle on its history within a week."

 

"Give me a month. I want to make sure I'll stand up to interrogation."

 

\------------

 

After dinner, they walk back to the office through the theatre district.

 

"You can't honestly be going back to work?" says Helena.

 

"I have a pitch to prep for. And after what I saw this afternoon, some art director's ass to kick."

 

"I have nothing to do but go home and tidy my kitchen. I feel quite inadequate."

 

"You should look into that cycling group. I'm sure they do evening sessions."

 

They're edging closer and closer together as they walk, almost-touching at the hip, the elbow. As they round a corner, past Union Square, Helena turns just a second too quickly, and suddenly they're face to face - Myka puzzled but expectant, Helena's breathing erratic again.

 

"I probably shouldn't," says Helena, and then does anyway, reaching up to kiss her, to slide a hand along her waist, run a thumb along the curve of her neck.

 

It's Myka who pulls away first, flattening a palm against Helena's collarbone to keep her at bay.

 

"Do you want to... not?" she asks.

 

And Helena, fear and guilt and anxiety subsumed under the weight of something new, something different and better altogether, leans in and kisses her again.


	6. Exchange

From: Jinks, Steve <s.jinks@warehouse.com>

To: Lake, Emily <e.lake@warehouse.com>

 

**Re: Intern?**

Today at 09:13

 

Hi Emily,

 

Hope you're settling in okay, and that everything's going well with Project Eagle. Myka says it all looks great - can't wait to see where you're at with it!

 

Just wanted to run something past you... We've got a new intern in Planning - she just landed with us last week, but she's been at Warehouse for a while (with Art and Client Services, I think) so she knows the ropes. She seems really interested in design, photography, etc. and pretty good at the computer side of things from what I can tell, so I wondered if maybe you might want her to help out with the Janus stuff?

 

Don't worry if not :)

 

Have a great day,

 

Steve

 

\---------

 

From: Bering, Myka <m.bering@warehouse.com>

To: Lake, Emily <e.lake@warehouse.com>

 

**Re: Janus Project Eagle**

Today at 09.31

 

Hi Emily,

 

We received the attached from Janus this morning. It's nothing radically different from the previous stimulus, but at least suggests that they're beginning to move away from the bird/dragon theme - I noticed a butterfly and a tree frog in there this time.

 

I can't imagine it will be all that much help to you, but there may be something that sparks an idea or two.

 

Thanks,

 

Myka

 

P.S. Attached also is a pdf flyer for the cycling group we discussed, including contact details and meet-times.

 

\---------

 

From: Jinks, Steve <s.jinks@warehouse.com>

To: Lake, Emily <e.lake@warehouse.com>

 

**Re: Intern?**

Today at 11.07

 

Me again,

 

Haven't heard back from you about the intern, so might bring her up to your office to meet you if that's okay? She's got a lot of energy, you'll love her I'm sure.

 

See you soon,

 

S

 

\---------

 

From: Lattimer, Peter <p.lattimer@warehouse.com>

To: Wells, Helena <h.wells@warehouse.com>

 

**Re: Do you want to get lunch at McGinty's?**

Today at 11.11

 

Theres a special on waffles, saw it on the way in this morning

 

\-------

 

Guilt sits low and oily in Helena's stomach. She struggles to work, to think. It's almost a relief when Steve appears at her door, trailed by a red-haired girl with headphones hanging from her neck.

 

"Emily!" he says, his voice a higher pitch than usual. "So glad we caught you. Did you get my emails?"

 

"Sorry, yes. I sat down to reply a moment ago."

 

"Don't worry! We just wanted to come say hi. This is Claudia, Claudia Donovan."

 

"Hey," says the girl.

 

"Claudia, this is Emily Lake, the designer I was talking about."

 

Claudia looks her up and down, quizzically.

 

"Lovely to meet you, Claudia," says Helena.

 

"I thought Claudia could sit in with you for a while," says Steve. "Pitch in some ideas for the Janus project, that kind of thing."

 

"That’s fine," says Helena. "If you're happy with that, Claudia?"

 

"Sure," says Claudia, shrugging.

 

"Great!" says Steve, edging away into the corridor. "I've actually got a call in 5 minutes, so I should probably get back. But let me know how it all goes, okay? And I'll see you guys later."

 

He closes the door a little more firmly than necessary as he leaves.

 

"Well," says Helena, "I should probably brief you on the project. It's quite an interesting one, if you like design problems - which Steve tells me you do?"

 

"Sure," says Claudia again.

 

"Wonderful."

 

"I have one question, actually, before we get started. Is that okay?"

 

"Of course. I'll answer it if I can."

 

"Right. So, I'm really just wondering - why does everyone here think your name is Emily Lake?"

 

\------

 

_"Have you heard of a Claudia Donovan?" she asks Pete over lunchtime waffles at McGinty's._

_"Oh man, have I! That's definitely a name I could do with never hearing again."_

_"Oh?"_

_"She knocked out the network. Well, okay, she didn't, but her name did. Day she started. One of the admin temps tried to input it into the database, and the whole system basically exploded. Took the IT guys 3 days to get it back online."_

_"That aside, what do you know about her?"_

_"That's just it - nothing. The second time they tried to log her in the system, it went out for a week. After that, they gave up, figured they'd be better off just leaving her name out altogether."_

_"So she doesn't actually exist, in Warehouse terms?"_

_"I guess not. I mean, obviously she exists, in that she's in the building. She's just not in the database. Are you eating that?"_

 

\-------

 

"Why would you think that wasn't my name?"

 

"It's not, right? You're Helena Wells. Who else would you be?"

 

"My name is Emily Lake."

 

"It so _isn't_ , though."

 

"This is a profoundly confusing exchange, from my perspective."

 

"I'll bet."

 

"Where would you get the idea that I'm somehow... going by another name?"

 

"Dude, I've _met_ you! Come on."

 

"Have you?"

 

"My brother is Josh Donovan. The climber? We came to your studio in London."

 

Helena feels the guilt shift, become something closer to sickness.

 

"For the Grappler launch."

 

"That's right! A bunch of us had dinner. I met your wife."

 

"Fiancée."

 

"Is she here? Does she know you're doing this new name thing?"

 

"We're... no longer together."

 

"That's a shame. She was a little snooty, but I kind of liked her. Is she the reason you're here, doing this? Did you, I don't know... run away or something?"

 

"There was no running. We separated, and then I came to America. Two entirely unrelated events. And even as I speak I realise that there is _absolutely no reason_ for me to tell you this."

 

"Sounds like you _want_ to tell me."

 

"I think I'm beginning to understand why Steve was so keen to dispatch you to another floor."

 

"Jinksy? He'll miss me now I'm gone. Why Emily Lake, anyway?”

 

“I don’t know that I can give you a response that will satisfy you. I’m still a little uncertain myself.”

 

“That  _is_ really unsatisfying. Does it mean you’re not on the run?”

 

“I am unequivocally not on the run.”

 

“Then I don’t get it. Why wouldn’t you want to be you?”

 

“At present I would very much like to be me. I am quite _desperate_ to be me. Being me, however, has become close to impossible.”

 

“That’s sort of beautiful. In a weird, cryptic kind of way. Can I sit down?”

 

She eases herself into the wheeled leather chair opposite Helena’s deck.

 

“Why not? Make yourself comfortable.”

 

“I realise you’re being sarcastic when you say that, but actually this seat is _crazy_ comfortable. I can’t believe it’s the one you give to visitors.”

 

“The other one is identical. Whoever orders them buys in bulk.”

 

“Makes sense. Unlike this situation, which makes, you know… none.”

 

“Are you going to tell Steve?” asks Helena. “Or Myka?”

 

“Who’s Myka?”

 

“You don’t know who Myka is? How long have you been here?”

 

“They’ve mostly kept me down in Client Services. All anyone talks about there is Artie and Mrs. Frederic and some feud or something they’ve got going on. And why does nobody call her Irene? She keeps getting interviewed for the Examiner, it’s not like they don’t know her name.”

 

“Answer the question, please. Will you tell Steve that I’m… not quite who I’ve been claiming to be?”

 

“Probably… no.”

 

“No?”

 

“I think probably no.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Wait, do you _want_ me to tell him?”

 

“Of course not. Good God, you are _infuriating_. Why would I _want_ you to tell him I’ve been lying to him?”

 

“I figured you didn’t. But then, I don’t really know you, so who knows _what_ you want?”

 

“Why would you protect me?”

 

“I’m not protecting you. I’m just not _outing_ you. Big difference.”

 

“Is there?”

 

“One takes a lot more effort than the other.”

 

“Fine. Why aren’t you outing me?”

 

“Two things.”

 

She crosses her legs, curling her feet under her body in a modified lotus position.

 

“First thing: Josh. You probably don’t remember much about him, but that Grappler thing you made – it changed his life. He’s taking it up Mount Everest next year. You’re his _hero_. You think I want to tell him that I got you fired, or thrown in jail, or whatever they’d do to you round here if they knew you were flying under false colours?”

 

“What’s the second thing?”

 

“Steve told me you’re building a flying machine.”

 

“And?”

 

“And you know the only thing cooler than building a flying machine? Building a flying machine with _Helena Wells_. I want in.”

 

\---------

 

From: Lake, Emily <e.lake@warehouse.com>

To: Jinks, Steve <s.jinks @warehouse.com>

Cc: Intern Intake <intern37@warehouse.com>

 

**Re: Intern?**

Today at 12.47

 

Hi Steve,

 

Apologies for the delay in replying.

 

Claudia and I have spent some time discussing the Janus brief this morning, and it seems logical for her to work with me here on the designs for now.

 

I hope that’s alright with you?

 

Best,

 

Emily

 

\---------

 

From: Jinks, Steve <s.jinks@warehouse.com>

To: Lake, Emily <e.lake@warehouse.com>

 

**Re: Intern?**

Today at 12.49

 

:)

 

\---------

 

From: Lake, Emily <e.lake@warehouse.com>

To: Bering, Myka <m.bering@warehouse.com>

 

**Re: Janus Project Eagle**

Today at 12.52

 

Thanks for the new stimulus. It seems safe to say they’re still looking to the animal kingdom for inspiration.

 

I had a lovely time last night.

 

E

 

\---------

 

From: Lattimer, Peter <p.lattimer@warehouse.com>

To: Wells, Helena <h.wells@warehouse.com>

 

**Re: Do you want to get lunch at McGinty's?**

Today at 12.57

 

Theyve got sausage pancakes now too. are you coming?


	7. Pencils

Claudia proves, to Helena’s surprise, a helpful and diligent assistant. She has informed interests in both materials technology and 3D modelling, and fleshes out Helena’s pencil-sketch designs with flair and unexpected attention to detail. She also has access, via her personal laptop, to the kind of industry software Helena can only dream of in her Emily Lake incarnation.

 

Helena elects not to question its provenance.

 

Her first afternoon in the office passes slowly, quietly but productively. They’re no closer to identifying the right design, the right _mode_ of spectacle – but they’re able to eliminate a number of possibilities, on practical as well as aesthetic grounds, and Helena considers this progress.

 

At six, Myka appears again the doorway.

 

"Hi," she says. Then, seeing Claudia: "Sorry, you're busy. I'll come back."

 

"I'd say we were drawing to a close, actually," says Helena. "Wouldn't you, Claudia?"

 

"I could keep going," says Claudia, looking up from, then immediately back down at her laptop screen.

 

"This is Claudia," says Helena apologetically. "Steve... introduced us."

 

"The intern, right?" says Myka, smiling. "Yeah, I think he mentioned you. Looks like Emily's keeping you occupied."

 

Helena takes two steps towards her, lowers her voice.

 

"Would you like to go somewhere to get a cup of coffee? I think she may have made a home here."

 

Claudia looks up again, glares, looks back down.

 

"Coffee sounds good," says Myka.

 

\-------

 

The canteen is not only empty but closed and shuttered - cash register unstaffed, plastic stools stacked haphazardly on tables, coffee machine locked away behind the counter.

 

"Sorry about this," says Helena, guiding them towards an upturned bench. "I assumed it would be open. Don't people work late in this building? I'm forever seeing lights on when I leave."

 

"I think mostly they leave the lights on so you _think_ they're working, even if they're halfway down the 101. It's a good trick. Like leaving your jacket on the back of the door when you go to lunch."

 

"As my friend Pete would put it: _sneaky_."

 

"I was actually wondering whether _I_ should apologise."

 

"For what?"

 

"For last night. The kissing. Although, on reflection, ‘apologise’ may not be exactly the right word."

 

"I would hope not. And in any case, I believe _I_ kissed _you_."

 

"I was... an active participant."

 

"That's reassuring, from my perspective."

 

"What I mean is, I'm not _actually_ sorry."

 

"Good to hear."

 

"I don't wish it hadn't happened."

 

"Carry on, please. You're dangerously close to sweeping me off my feet."

 

"I'm just not sure whether it's something I should have... participated. In."

 

"I see. Are you absolutely _sure_ you used to be a copywriter?"

 

Myka swats her on the arm, but it's gentle, affectionate.

 

"You just got here. And we're working together. I don't want to take advantage."

 

"I'm choosing to be flattered that you see me as some sort of sexual neophyte waiting to be led astray."

 

"Fine. Got it. You're a woman of vast and varied experience. But we're still, you know, co-workers."

 

"'Vast' may be overstating things a little."

 

"Sufficient? Adequate?"

 

"That's... damning. There’s surely a happier middle ground? Also, observation suggests that very few other people in the building share your ethical concerns. Steve and that square-jawed doorman I saw him arrive with this morning, for example."

 

"Liam. And I think he's actually Head of Security."

 

"A co-worker nonetheless."

 

"So you're saying it was fine for me to have kissed you?"

 

"I suppose I am, yes. I'd go as far as to say better than fine, for me at least."

 

"And you don't think there are protocol issues at play here? That there's anything I need to apologise for?"

 

Helena wonders how Emily Lake might handle this question; what Emily Lake might think about protocol, about office romances.

 

"If there is," she says, moving closer, "there may be more apologies due later."

 

\--------

 

"You're playing with fire. _Totally_ playing with fire."

 

Claudia stares at Helena from across the desk.

 

"I'd ask what you mean, but overall I think I'd prefer not to know."

 

"The lady from just now. Big hair, wide eyes lady. You're _with_ her."

 

"I am not," says Helena, less sure even than she sounds.

 

"Seriously, the way you were looking at each other! Could not be more obvious."

 

"Could we perhaps return to the awkward silence of earlier? I feel a sudden nostalgia for it."

 

"You're with her, and she thinks you're this... Emily Lake person. It cannot end well."

 

"I would very much like not to talk about this now. And indeed in the future."

 

"You're doing that thing again where you avoid the question."

 

"You didn't ask a question. Only levelled accusations."

 

"Here's a question, then: why are you letting her think you're somebody else, when we both know it isn't gonna end well?"

 

"Claudia. Please."

 

"You've gotta be asking yourself the same thing."

 

"Alright. Yes. Yes, I am asking myself the same thing. Yes, I am aware that whatever is happening between us will not end well. Yes, I would very much like to tell her the truth. And yes, I am too afraid to do so, even though, despite the conclusions you seem to have drawn, I am not in any meaningful sense _with_ her. Just, yes. Yes to everything."

 

She steadies herself on the desktop, palms flat against the wood. Breathes slowly in and out.

 

"You're a very complex person, aren't you?" says Claudia. "You should tell her," she adds.

 

"I can't. And we really have to stop talking about this."

 

"We do?"

 

"Yes, we do. I'm due at her house for dinner in half an hour."

 

Claudia shakes her head.

 

"Playing with fire," she says again.

 

\---------

 

Myka's house is less living space than reading room, books battling with magazines and multi-lingual journals for dominance across shelves and ledges.

 

"You know," says Helena, "I thought at first that your office was the library. But I see now that it's just where you keep the overspill."

 

"It's not hoarding," says Myka, sitting down beside her. "Not if I still read them."

 

"You don't have to justify it. I have a few hoarding tendencies myself."

 

"What do you hoard?"

 

"Stationery, for the most part. Pencils, rulers, compasses and so on."

 

"I suppose it's easier to store, at least. More compact."

 

"You'd reconsider that assessment if you saw my old flat."

 

"You didn't bring them over here with you? The pencils?"

 

"No. My... former person took the majority of them with her when she moved out."

 

"Your ex stole your pencils?"

 

"I wouldn't say 'stole,' exactly. At no point did I stop her or ask her to return them."

 

"Is she the reason you took the job out here? Actually, you know what? Don't answer that one. Totally inappropriate first date question."

 

"Was last night not a first date?"

 

"Last night was an intervention. To stop you passing out at your desk."

 

"In that case, I shall reign in my second date excesses. Expect first date levels of politeness hereafter."

 

"I can't imagine how you could _get_ much more polite, but okay. Remind me not to offer you tea, I wouldn't want you to feel obliged to refuse it."

 

"I don't actually drink tea. And to your earlier question: yes, she was part of the reason I moved out to San Francisco, though not the whole reason. More than anything I needed a change of scenery. It wasn't an especially amicable breakup."

 

"I'm sorry I asked. Can we forget I asked?"

 

"I'd be delighted to."

 

"Tell me something else. Tell me how you're finding Warehouse."

 

"Would 'agreeably chaotic' sound too pejorative?"

 

"Chaotic is right. For what it's worth, we used to be a lot more structured. I think we're all just struggling to accommodate the changes. Artie especially."

 

"Yes?"

 

"It's put a lot of pressure on him to hold everything together. He didn't used to be quite as... irritable as he's been lately."

 

"You know him well?"

 

"Pretty well. He's the one who hired me when I first started. It's hard not to be grateful for that. And he's taken an interest in what I've been doing as I've gone along. Looked after me a little. I can't say for sure, but I've got a fair idea that it was him who pushed Mrs. Frederic to interview me for the job I'm in now. I don't see how she would have heard about me otherwise."

 

"A mentor, then."

 

Myka laughs.

 

"Not exactly. I know you've not met him yet, but trust me: he's not a very paternal guy. More like a distant, mostly-distracted thesis advisor. Or maybe a Greek god: watching from the mountain, sweeping down to earth to interfere a little then sweeping right back up again."

 

"I've heard similar things about your Mrs. Frederic."

 

"I'm not sure she ever leaves the mountain, actually. I've only ever met her in Texas."

 

"You don't think she'll come to San Francisco?"

 

"It won't improve Artie's mood if she does."

 

Helena glances at her watch.

 

"It's getting very late," she says, standing. "I should leave you to sleep."

 

"Okay," says Myka, standing to join her.

 

"Is that alright?"

 

"What? Sure, of course."

 

They edge closer together.

 

"Thank you for dinner," says Helena.

 

"Do you not want to stay?" says Myka quickly. Then: "That came out a lot more demanding than I intended. Let me try again: would you like to stay? Because I'd like you to stay."

 

"I don't know," says Helena, but she's reaching out a hand towards Myka's hip, under the edges of her sweater, over the bare skin of her stomach.

 

"While I appreciate your honesty," says Myka, leaning into the hand, the touch, "that other thing you're doing is kind of... discordant."

 

"Discordant?"

 

"Disjunctive, maybe. The opposite of _I_ _don't know_."

 

"I'm sorry," says Helena, moving her hand upwards, fingers drawing and circling.

 

"Still less clarity than I'd like," says Myka, stepping forward, into Helena's space.

 

And Helena is kissing her again, harder and more, pulling at her clothes, pushing her back onto the sofa.

 

Myka's phone rings, startlingly loudly, from the top of a book pile.

 

"Ignore it," she says, mouth at Helena's neck.

 

When it rings again, Helena pulls away, bent knees anchoring her to Myka's thigh. She tries to settle herself; adjusts her shirt, runs a shaking hand through her hair.

 

"We're stopping?" says Myka.

 

"You should answer that."

 

"It's past eleven. They can wait."

 

She levers herself upwards on her elbows, face towards Helena's.

 

"Myka, there's something I need to tell you. Something I _want_ to tell you."

 

"Okay. Do you want me to move? Actually, given where we are, _you'd_ probably need to be the one moving, but you know what I mean."

 

"No." Helena takes Myka's hands, brings one to either side of her waist to hold her in place. "Please, can we stay where we are?"

 

"Okay."

 

_It_ _cannot end well_ , thinks Helena.

 

"Very recently," she says, "I found myself in a... difficult situation. Professionally."

 

The phone rings a third time.

 

"Jesus, who _is_ it? Just... wait one second, okay? I'll turn it off."

 

Myka untangles herself from Helena, strides across to the book pile to retrieve the handset.

 

"It's Artie," she says, squinting at the screen.

 

"Is that unusual? Is he given to calling you at this time of night?"

 

"He's called me maybe ten times in the last decade. He's an email person."

 

"Should you call him back?"

 

"He's just sent a text. Which is also very not like him. Hold on, let me look."

 

Her spine straightens, stiffens as she reads.

 

"Is everything alright?" says Helena, moving behind her, pressing a light kiss to her shoulder blade.

 

"I don't know. He wants me to come into the office. Now."

 

"Do you want me to drive you? I've only had water."

 

"That would be incredibly helpful, actually. Are you sure you wouldn't mind?"

 

"I'd be happy to."

 

"Thank you. And also, this is not in any way how I was anticipating tonight would end."

 

"Anticipating?"

 

"Hoping, then."

 

"It really isn't a problem."

 

"I'm just going to grab some things from upstairs. Maybe after that we could get going?"

 

"Take your time."

 

\--------

 

While she waits, Helena checks her own phone. There's a single message, from Pete, sent an hour before.

 

_If youre online check the news. Ad guy back again, worse than before. Artie is *pissed*_

 


	8. Consequences

“Why are you following me?”

 

“I’m not following you. I’m coming _with_ you.”

 

Helena is back in yet another Warehouse lift, travelling down to meet Pete for yet another sausage pancake at McGinty’s. She has the beginnings of protein fatigue. She also has Claudia for company.

 

“I would, as I have already firmly indicated, rather you were not.”

 

“Why? You know I’ve got your secret covered.”

 

“Would you please not mention that in public?”

 

Claudia looks exaggeratedly left, then right.

 

“Who exactly do you think will hear us in this _sealed glass box_? We’re good. Which really just reinforces the point I’m trying to make here: I’m very discreet. You can take me anywhere.”  

 

“I would prefer not to take you to lunch.”

 

“Because you’re catching up with the big-haired lady who thinks you’re someone else. Got it.”

 

“I’m not ‘catching up’ with Myka. I’m seeing a friend.”

 

“Not Jinksy?”

 

“No. Another person altogether. And must we stop at _every_ floor if nobody is actually getting in?”

 

“Not loving the view?”

 

“Please be quiet. Just once.”

 

“So who is it you’re meeting?”

 

“As I said: a friend. There is no chance whatsoever that you know him.”

 

“Then you have even less to worry about. You can introduce me as your other friend or helper or whatever, and I can pretend you’re this Emily Lake. Although it’s funny, I keep wanting to call you Emily Pond. Could be a Doctor Who thing.”

 

“There will be no need to _call me_ anything.”

 

“Because you don’t want me to come?”

 

“Because you are _not coming_. And also, secondarily, because the friend I’m meeting doesn’t know me by that name.”

 

“You have a third identity? That’s definitely one too many. Time to cut back on that.”

 

“He knows who I am. My real name.”

 

“Which is… what, again?”

 

The lift draws to a smooth stop on the ground floor. The doors open.

 

“Goodbye, Claudia,” says Helena, stepping out into the lobby. “I’ll see you later.”

 

“Why wait, when you can see me now?” says Claudia, keeping pace with her as she pushes through the exit. “And don’t worry. Your friend is gonna love me.”

 

\-------

 

“She doesn’t know what we’ve been doing, does she?” says Pete from behind a menu. “About, you know… the _observation_?”

 

“No.”

 

“’Cause you know we can’t tell anyone? They can’t _know_ they’re being watched.”

 

“I can honestly say I have told no-one. And must you talk like that?”

 

“I’m being covert here.”

 

“You look like a ventriloquist. More to the point, she can still hear you.”

 

“Who are you watching?” says Claudia, putting down her own menu.

 

“Nobody,” says Pete.

 

“Nice. Very covert.”

 

“Pete is looking for someone,” says Helena. “A blogger. The one who’s been writing about Warehouse.”

 

“H.G.!” says Pete.

 

He kicks her lightly under the table. She kicks back harder, the ball of her foot connecting with his shinbone. He winces, quietly.

 

“H.G.?” says Claudia to Helena. “We’ll come back to that.”

 

“I pray we never do.”

 

Claudia reaches for her iPad.

 

“Do you mean this guy?” she says, turning the screen towards them. “He’s all over Twitter. Didn’t he just call the boss a jackass or something?”

 

“’Incompetent fat-necked Napoleon’,” says Pete, still grimacing.

 

“That’s a little rough. His neck seemed pretty normal when I met him.”

 

“It is. He just wears his tie too tight around the collar. Kinda makes his face look like a balloon.”

 

“He wasn’t named directly,” says Helena. “There was some attempt at an alias.”

 

“Right,” says Pete. “It’s not Artie he’s talking about. It’s _Depot CEO Andy Nelson_ who has the fat neck.”

 

“That’s a pretty lame alias,” says Claudia.

 

“In any case,” says Helena. “Pete has been tasked with finding this person, whoever they are. Hence the secrecy.”

 

“He’s sneaky,” says Pete. “So we need to be sneakier.”

 

“Although as today has amply demonstrated, stealth is not among our strong suits.”

 

“I wouldn’t say that, fireplayer,” says Claudia to Helena.

 

“What’d she call you?” says Pete. “Is that another nickname?”

 

“She’s a woman of many names,” says Claudia solemnly.

 

“Must I kick you both under the table?”

 

“You definitely don’t want that,” says Pete from the corner of his mouth. “She’s got some serious calf muscle. I’m gonna bruise tomorrow.”

 

“What are you doing to find this Adman guy, anyway?” asks Claudia.

 

“Right now? Nothing. H.G. thought we should look for hidden messages in the other stuff he’s been writing, but we got nothing. Like I said, he’s sneaky.”

 

Claudia picks up the tablet from the table.

 

“You know,” she says, “if it’s sneaky you need, I might be able to help you. I can be pretty sneaky myself, sometimes.”

 

\-------

 

After lunch, Pete steals Claudia and her iPad away to the basement.

 

(“I want to know what she can do. Don’t you want to know what she can do? I bet she’s some sort of tech genie or something. Like Mark Zuckerberg. Or, have you seen that movie Hackers? Like that.”)

 

Helena takes the lift back up to her office, mind wandering to Myka, then back again to Claudia and her promised wizardry. Her door is open and she’s halfway inside before she realises that she’s not alone, that there’s someone in there already.

 

“Helena?” says Artie. “What are you doing here?”

 

He’s behind her desk, fingers rifling through her papers, her designs. He doesn’t seem, to her relief, to have logged on to her computer.

 

“There was an email,” she says, improvising wildly. “From HR. To Emily Lake. This is her office, I think? I thought I’d come up to make sure she’d… got it.”

 

“What _is_ all this stuff?” he says, holding one of her sketches close to his nose.

 

“Designs, perhaps? For a prototype. Possibly.”

 

“Is it something to do with the new Janus brief, do you know?”

 

“Sorry, I’m… not familiar with that project.”

 

He pulls off his glasses; pinches the bridge of his nose.

 

“Emily Lake – have you actually met her?”

 

Helena thinks; weighs up a handful of scenarios in which she and Emily Lake might feasibly have crossed paths.

 

“Once or twice,” she says. “There were some administrative issues to deal with when she first arrived. Minor, minor ones.”

 

“What did you make of her?”

 

“I can’t say I saw her for long. But she seems like a very friendly woman. Very... warm.”

 

“Warm. Interesting.”

 

He looks up at her, finally.

 

“You’ve been working with Pete Lattimer, haven’t you? The efficiency guy. Downstairs somewhere.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“Could you go get him for me? Tell him to come up to my office?”

 

“Your office?”

 

“My office, yeah. I want to talk to him about something.”

 

She lingers in the doorway, just a fraction too long.

 

“There something else you want, Helena?”

 

“Will you be coming with me?”

 

He picks up another leaf of paper from the desk; bends down to examine it more closely.

 

“I’ll be up in a little bit. Close the door on your way out, okay?”

 

\-------

 

With nowhere to go, she seeks solace in the familiar quiet of the 25th floor.

 

On the way, she sends a text to Pete, conveying Artie’s message; then a second to Claudia, urging her to stay away from the office for the remainder of the afternoon; and finally a third, to Myka.

 

They meet in the alcove, by the hot chocolate dispenser.

 

“If this is our second date,” says Myka as Helena hands her a cardboard cup, “I don’t know whether I should find it incredibly romantic or a little insulting. At least I made you dinner.”

 

“Would it help if I brought you a Pop Tart to go with it?”

 

"Where would you get a Pop Tart?"

 

"I passed an open box on one of the desks down the corridor. I assume they're fair game."

 

"Sold, then. I'm not going to get a better offer than that."

 

"What time did you get back home last night? You look surprisingly well-rested."

 

"Around 1.30. But I slept in this morning."

 

"Atop one of your mountains of books?"

 

"I hear they're softer than pencils."

 

"You know, at this point I'm half-expecting you to whip out some fact or other about graphite."

 

"Sorry. I've never actually worked on stationery. I know the first erasers were made of bread, if that gets me anywhere?"

 

"They weren't _made of_ bread; they _were_ bread. But points for effort regardless."

 

Helena places a hand over Myka's, over the cardboard cup.

 

"I feel like I should say, not while we're at work," says Myka, looking down at the hand but making no attempt to move it.

 

"I think we're probably safe in here. Unless your colleague Ron makes another unscheduled appearance."

 

"You know, I could have killed him for that. It wasn't even an important call; I think he just likes the drama."

 

"It was probably for the best. Who knows what might have happened otherwise? I seem to remember finding your chocolate story powerfully attractive."

 

"I actually do have to go, though - I have a meeting. A real meeting, not one of Ron's pseudo-emergencies."

 

"Then I shall miss you, but shall drown my sorrows in consolatory Pop Tarts."

 

"Are you free tomorrow night? We could do something. I have no idea what, but we could do something."

 

"We've already done dinner, and now drinks. What's left? Surely nothing but roller skating."

 

"If you're serious, I have more than one pair of skates at home."

 

"Thank you, but no. I'd prefer that you didn't see me try to navigate the pier with wheels strapped to my feet."

 

"I think I would very much like to see that. But okay. Leave it with me. I'll think of something. And then maybe you can tell me that thing you were going to tell me last night.”

 

\-------

 

"You look guilty," says Claudia later.

 

She's installed in the basement, behind two laptop screens.

 

"I'm perfectly fine," says Helena, distractedly.

 

"You're feeling bad. For lying to your woman."

 

"Is there anything I could say to you that wouldn’t invite further discussion of my feelings?"

 

"I don't need you to say anything. Like I said before, it’s _obvious_. Even to me, and I've only known you two days. You have a very expressive face, H.G."

 

"You and Pete have been talking, I see.”

 

“He’s a fun guy. Knows a lot about snack foods.”

 

“He’s quite encyclopaedic in some areas. Some very specific areas. Were you able to help him with his problem?”

 

“Yes. But also no.”

 

“This is going to be one of _those_ conversations, isn’t it? Alright. In what sense ‘yes’?”

 

“In the sense that I found a way into the server – pretty quickly by the way, in case you were wondering – and I’m not 100% sure, but I could probably give you a reasonable idea of who it is that’s been running the blog.”

 

“That sounds promising. Why ‘no’?”

 

“I haven’t told Pete.”

 

“Why on earth not? You’ll make his day. And I have a feeling he may need the boost, after his meeting with Artie.”

 

“Because there’ll be consequences. For… this person. Like with you and your woman. There are always consequences. And I don’t know that I want to be responsible for them.”

 

“Will you at least tell _me_ , then? You must know given my situation that I have no reason to… sabotage anyone for something like this. Or cast judgements.”

 

“And you won’t tell Pete?”

 

“Not if you’d rather I didn’t.”

 

“Okay. Okay.”

 

“Who is it, Claudia? Is it someone you know?”

 

“It's someone we both know. That's the thing. It's Jinksy."


	9. Covert

When Myka's nervous, she memorises. Or rather, she organises, in anticipation of memorising. Organises theories, facts, words, icons, symbols - meticulously arranging them into ordered, logical flashcard decks, always-evolving stacks of data to work through later, to learn and audit. The process gives a kind of two-fold pleasure: it calms her, temporarily removes her from herself, and it helps her _get somewhere_ , accelerates her towards unspecified-but-desirable cognitive milestones. It soothes, but it also instructs.

 

Her current anxiety, she's discovering, isn't easily alleviated by pitch constellations or Hungarian subjunctives, no matter how beautifully organised.

 

She'd been nervous anyway, in the run-up to the evening - worried about where to go, what to do, how best to impress Emily, about Emily herself and her almost-confession two nights before. But these worries, she'd found, had been easy enough to dismiss, or at least to keep at a manageable distance, dwarfed as they were to a low-level disquiet by more visceral _wants_ and _needs_ \- to keep seeing Emily, keep talking to her, keep touching her.

 

And then, Artie.

 

His invitation to lunch hadn't surprised her when it came - typically, via a last-minute email with little regard for her schedule. She'd anticipated more discussion of what he'd taken to calling Our Internet Problem; some yelling, maybe some calls for Chuck from IT or Pete from HR to be fired for their ineptitude. She hadn’t anticipated his opening question, posed before she'd even poured the water.

 

"What do you know about Emily Lake?" he'd asked.

 

"Know?" she'd said.

 

"Have you met her? Worked with her? Sat next to her in a meeting, anything like that?"

 

"We've met," she'd said, neutrally. "Steve brought her in on Project Eagle, for the design angle. She's good."

 

"Have you talked to her much?"

 

"A little, I guess. What's this about, Artie?"

 

"Myka," he'd said, leaning in. "What I'm about to tell you cannot go further than this table, do you understand? It _cannot_ go further."

 

"Understood. What is it? What can’t go further?”

 

"Emily Lake. I think she may be working for Irene."

 

"What does that mean? Aren’t we _all_ , you know… working for Irene?"

 

She'd struggled over the name, the absent honorific.

 

"I mean directly working for her. Reporting back to her. On me, on the San Francisco office."

 

"That's pretty paranoid."

 

"Is it? You don't know the full story."

 

"Then tell me."

 

_Please, tell me_ , she'd added silently.

 

"She's not supposed to be here, Myka. I checked. She's supposed to be on sabbatical."

 

"So? People change their minds. She might have had reasons for coming over early. She might have sold her house, or, I don’t know… broken up with someone. You have no way of knowing."

 

"Don't I? She argued for that sabbatical. It was one of the conditions of her taking the job - she wanted to do the Inca Trail, Macchu Picchu, something like that."

 

"Amazonia. The rainforest."

 

"She told you?"

 

"You did. When you told us she was coming on board."

 

"But she didn't go, do you see? She didn't take the sabbatical. She came straight here instead. Why would she do that? Unless she had some other reason."

 

"So you think, what? That she's spying for Mrs... for Irene?"

 

"Doesn't it make sense, though? You know she's been watching us like a hawk lately."

 

"Irene?"

 

"Yes, Irene," he'd said, a trace of irritation seeping through. "She's got me in her cross-hairs. Especially since this... blogging thing. She wants me out. So you have to ask yourself: why wouldn't she... import somebody to keep an eye on things?"

 

A group of young British men had entered the restaurant then, talking loudly.

 

"Fucking English," Artie had muttered.

 

" _You're_ English," Myka had said. "Technically, anyway."

 

"I know. It's taken me thirty years to get away from that. Did I tell you my niece has come over here, by the way? Now _that's_ English. You could grate cheese on her accent."

 

"I didn't even know you had a niece."

 

"I don't, really. She's more of a cousin, distant cousin. Left her girlfriend at the altar, got disgraced, came to Warehouse looking for a job. I'm not judging," he'd added quickly. "Not the girlfriend part anyway."

 

"Why are you telling me this, Artie?" she'd said. "About Emily Lake, I mean. You don't just... share. Not without a reason."

 

"I forget sometimes how long you've known me. And you're right, obviously. There’s a reason. I do want something from you."

 

"What? What do you need?"

 

"I want you to help me. To get to know Emily Lake. Get close to her."

 

She's sure that she'd blushed, then - that her face had betrayed her, that some other physiological cue beyond her control had told him _exactly_ what she knew, _exactly_ how close she'd gotten.

 

But whatever he'd seen, he'd misread - as shock, or horror, or pre-emptive guilt.

 

"I know it's a lot to ask," he'd said. "I wouldn't, you know I wouldn't take this to anyone else. But I need to know what's going on, what Irene's planning. So I can protect myself. Protect us."

 

"You want me to spy on her."

 

"No, I don't want you to _spy_ on her. I want you to get close to her, ask her the right questions – find out what she knows. Maybe take a look at her notes, see if there’s anything there."

 

"That's spying, Artie."

 

"Don't be so melodramatic."

 

"I can't do it. I'm sorry."

 

"What do you mean, you can't do it? I'm not asking you to do anything illegal here. It's not even unethical - it's for us, for the company."

 

"I won't do that to Emily."

 

"'Emily'? Is there something else going on here, Myka?"

 

"What? No! God, I just... It doesn't feel right.”

 

"And if she reports back to Irene that things are going to shit around here - will _that_ feel right? If she recommends, I don't know... some senior-level restructuring, what about that? You need to get your priorities straight."

 

“No. I can’t.”

 

"Look," he'd said, more gently, leaning in. "Just think about it. I don't need an answer right away. Just think about it, and we'll go from there."

 

And, to her shame, she'd nodded, and smiled, and ordered lunch, and let the rest of his conversation wash over her.

 

\------

 

Her afternoon meetings pass in a blur of flip-charts and marker pens, client calls and PowerPoint slides. She's edgy and distracted, reflecting unhappily on Emily and trust, and Mrs. Frederic and trust, and the limits of her commitment to Warehouse, to Artie.

 

Steve notices, and pulls her aside after a session with Insight.

 

"Myka," he says, "is everything okay? You seem kind of... off."

 

"Long day," she says.

 

"But a good night ahead, right?"

 

She'd told him, fresh from her most recent encounter with Emily, about the date they'd made; had solicited his advice on suitable venues, appropriate activities.

 

("Yoga," he'd said decisively. "Everybody loves yoga").

 

"I don't know," she says.

 

"Yesterday you were excited. This morning you were excited. You've been consistently excited when it comes to Emily since you met her. We’re talking puppy-dog levels of excitement. So what's changed?"

 

"You know she was supposed to be taking a sabbatical to go travelling? She wasn't supposed to be here for another two months."

 

"So?"

 

"So why didn't she? Why isn't she on leave right now, camping out in the rainforest the way she was supposed to?"

 

"I have no idea. People cancel trips. Why do you think it matters?"

 

"I don't know."

 

"Now that's a lie."

 

"It was just something Artie said."

 

"Artie? Has he even met Emily?"

 

"No."

 

"Then I'm surprised he even had an opinion on her, much less that you think his opinion is worth listening to."

 

"Be nice. He's still the one in charge."

 

"Maybe not forever. And he's an asshole."

 

"Stop."

 

"Do you know he nearly pulled me off the Janus account last week? Not just the Project Eagle stuff, the whole account."

 

"That makes no sense. They're your client."

 

"He thinks that a whiskey brand might need - and this almost a direct quote - a 'more masculine touch.' More Don Draper, less... I don't even know how he thinks of me. Judy Garland? RuPaul? He definitely sees me as a pink cocktail guy, not a Scotch man."

 

"He didn't actually say that."

 

"More or less."

 

"He's not a homophobe. He's difficult sometimes, but he's not a homophobe."

 

"Not with you, maybe. But he's probably thinks it doesn't count when it's women."

 

"Are you still on Janus?"

 

"For now. Scott likes me, Artie knows that."

 

"Scott?"

 

"Their marketing manager. He plays in Liam's soccer league."

 

"Another pink cocktail guy?"

 

"Beer and pretzels. I can't speak for his husband, though."

 

"And Artie doesn't know about this husband?"

 

"I think he just sees the beer and pretzels."

 

"I'm sorry."

 

"Don't be. But also don't listen to him, about Emily or anything else. She's nice. Actually, no - not nice: interesting. Enigmatic. And helpful."

 

"Because she took that intern off your hands?"

 

"Not just that. Although that _was_ pretty helpful."

 

"She didn't seem so bad, the intern."

 

"’Bad’ isn’t the word. She’s actually sort of sweet, when you get past the attitude. I've just… never known someone ask so many questions."

 

"Aren't we supposed to be encouraging their curiosity?"

 

"The last thing that kid needs is encouragement."

 

"I think Emily likes her."

 

"Then we should add 'patient' to the list of Emily’s virtues. Never let her go."

 

"Do you really like her? Emily?"

 

"Yes. But it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t, and it certainly doesn’t matter if Artie does or doesn’t. Where are you taking her tonight?"

 

"I still haven't decided. I should probably get on that."

 

"No to yoga?"

 

"No to yoga."

 

\-------

 

By 5.30, she’s finished with meetings. Artie's waiting for her in her office.

 

"Irene's coming," he says. "Here. Two weeks from now."

 

"For how long?"

 

"She didn't say. But she's called a leadership team meeting for the day she arrives. And she wants you and Mr. Jinks there."

 

"That doesn't sound terrible."

 

"There's more. She wants the whole team down in Austin the Friday before that. Some of the Insight and People guys too."

 

"Why?"

 

"She's putting on a workshop. Team-building and ideation."

 

"Ideation? What are we ideating?"

 

"Again: she didn't say. She's got my balls on the block, she can afford to be mysterious."

 

"You think she's planning something?"

 

"Of course she's planning something! It's Irene. The power play is her signature move."

 

"Should we be worried?"

 

"I am, I can tell you."

 

"I guess Steve and I are going to Austin, then."

 

"We can't go into this blind. We need information, Myka."

 

"No, Artie. No."

 

"You need to talk to Emily Lake. We need to know what she's doing, what she knows."

 

"I can't. I told you, I can't do that."

 

"Why not? You don't owe her anything. She got here, what, an hour ago? She's nobody to you."

 

"I'm not a secret agent, okay? I'm not going to spy for you."

 

He pauses, holds her gaze for a moment; seems to make a decision.

 

"You've never worked anywhere else, have you? Other than Warehouse, I mean."

 

"You know I haven't," she says warily.

 

"Then you have no idea, do you, what it's like out there? How tough it is, how good you've got it here?"

 

"Where are you going with this? Are you threatening me?"

 

"Of course I'm not threatening you. I care about you; you're like my own kid. But this _matters_ , and I need you to understand that."

 

"I'm an adult woman. I'm not a child."

 

"Then make an adult choice. Do what needs doing. This affects everybody - not just you and me, but everyone here, everyone in this building. What's Emily Lake compared to that?"

 

 

 

 


	10. Performance

Emily's apartment is essentially a show-home, Myka thinks. No framed pictures, no mementos - no sense of an impression made on the pre-existing structures of each room, a disappointing lack of anything recognisably _Emily_. She spots a toolbox, a pile of paper, a utility knife on the desktop - but there's an overarching anonymity, a placeless functionality that does nothing to ease her anxiety. Even the drapes - velvet, heavy and anachronistic beside the sparse furnishings - seem not so much an interior design decision on Emily's part as the hallmark of an elderly, traditionalist landlord.

"I don't see any pencils," she says, indicating an empty shelving unit.

"I've yet to assemble a new collection worth exhibiting," says Emily, smiling. "Though contributions are welcome."

Things are less easy between them than usual tonight, less playful: the conversation more stilted, the pauses longer and more leaden. It's her fault, Myka knows; for not being quite able to shake her doubts, her suspicions. Her guilt. It's awkward because she's _making_ _it_ awkward.

"I'd say 'sit down,'" Emily adds, "but I'm not entirely sure where I'd put you."

There's no sofa, no chair except the one tucked away behind the desk. Just a bed. In her current state Myka would prefer not to think at all about the bed, much less plant herself on it.

"I'm fine, thanks," she says. "I can, you know... keep doing what I'm doing."

"Can I at least get you a drink while you hover?"

"I'm fine," she says again.

Emily closes the gap between them; puts a warm hand on Myka's elbow.

"Is everything alright?" she asks. "You haven't seemed entirely yourself since you arrived."

"It's been kind of a difficult day," says Myka, settling on a convenient half-truth.

"With Janus?"

"That. And... other things."

"Nothing to do with Steve?"

Myka blinks back her surprise.

"Steve? No. I mean, I've seen him today, but everything's good with him, I think. Why wouldn't it be?"

"No reason," says Emily cagily. "I just wondered whether something might be... wrong. With him. Whether he might be upset about something, perhaps."

"He's fine. I think."

"Excellent. Good to hear."

Another long, uncomfortable silence draws out between them.

"How was yours? Your day?" says Myka.

"Possibly not quite as long as it felt. One Claudia was challenging; two are exhausting."

"There are two Claudias?"

"I introduced her to a... friend of mine. They've turned out to be remarkably similar."

"That's got to be a handful."

There's silence, again. Myka normally deals well with silence; doesn't fear it, doesn't feel any compulsion to fill it unnecessarily. This silence, though - this gaping, endless, terrible silence - is somehow unbearable.

"Why didn't you take your trip?" she asks suddenly. "Your... Amazon thing?"

Emily looks stunned, speechless.

Myka curses her bluntness, her lack of subtlety. More than that, she curses her suspicions - that she's let Artie infect her with his paranoia, let him (maybe) ruin the evening before it's even started. For all she knows, the Amazon adventure was an anniversary gift to Emily from her stationery-stealing ex, abandoned in the wake of the breakup - and now a painful reminder of a period she'd rather not revisit.

"What makes you ask?" says Emily eventually.

"I just... wondered," says Myka, lamely.

Emily takes her hand; wraps their fingers together.

"I don't want to lie to you," she says. "About why I... didn't go there."

"Then don't," says Myka. "I shouldn't have asked. It's obviously not something you want to talk about."

"I don't want to lie to you," says Emily again, still holding her hand.

The silence now is thicker, heavier than ever. Myka cracks under the weight of it.

"This isn't how I'd hoped this early part of the date would go," she says. 

Emily laughs.

"It's certainly more intense than rollerskating."

"I haven't even told you where we're going yet."

"That's true. You should certainly tell me soon. I've had visions of longboarding. Slacklining, even."

"I'm not a good date right now. On multiple levels, apparently."

"Nevertheless, I'm glad that you're here. If you still _want_ to be here?"

"I really do."

"And so do I. So, now that we've established that: please tell me where it is that we're going. And that we won't need... apparatus."

\-------

"A Carry On film?"

"Not just any Carry On film - Carry On Camping. It's one of the good ones, right?"

"I'm not sure I've ever successfully sat through one in its entirety. So I have little to compare it to, one way or the other."

"Think of it as a celebration of your Englishness."

The theatre is packed, almost every seat taken. They are, as far as Myka can tell, the only women in the audience. They're also, conspicuously, the only ones not in wigs and bikinis.

"It's certainly popular," says Emily. "I've never seen so many Barbara Windsors under one roof."

"Who?"

"You'll see. Suffice to say, I feel both overdressed and under-endowed."

"I'm a little surprised they let us in without costumes. I didn't know about the costumes, by the way."

"I'm not sure what I'd have done, had they been mandatory. Now tell me, do you know anything at all about this film that we're about to see?"

"Not a lot, no. Just what I read when I bought the tickets."

"Then I would recommend that you brace yourself for a frenzy of bra-flinging in the very near future."

"What?"

"You'll see."

\------

"That's British comedy?" says Myka afterwards.

"One facet of it," says Emily.

"Those other guys seemed to enjoy it. And that _was_ a lot of bra-flinging. One of the bikini tops made it all the way across the aisle."

" _I_ enjoyed it. Though perhaps the experience more than the film itself. I've never really _done_ audience participation."

"The movie really was all kinds of awful, wasn't it?"

"And still I had a wonderful time. Which should surely quell any lingering concerns about your performance as a date."

"So you don't want to come back to my place and rent another one?" says Myka. "There's quite a few of them, I think. And isn't there one about Cleopatra? I could go for that."

"Perhaps we could go to mine instead?"

"Do you even have a television?"

"Happily, no."

\-----

Myka can't _not_ touch her. With the earlier awkwardness between them receding, the effort required to hold back is too much; for Myka now there's only need, sharp and hot and propulsive.

The cab ride back to Emily's apartment passes in a fever-haze of grasping and kissing, hands and mouths. It's a struggle to pass through the hallway, up the stairs, but then they're past the front door of the apartment and Myka's pushing Emily against it, leg between hers, pressing and reaching. Emily breathes against her ear, light gasps punctuated by deeper moans, and Myka thinks she hears her name, or something like it.

And then Emily is saying something else - words rather than sounds, breaths hardening into syllables.

"What?" says Myka, slowing but not stopping.

"I need to tell you," says Emily. "I need to tell you the truth."

But her arms are wrapped around Myka's neck, and she's pressing _down_ against Myka's leg, and Myka's pressing _up_ and into her, and it's difficult then to know what to say, or whether to say anything.

"What do you want to tell me?" says Myka eventually, fingers working against the buttons of Emily's shirt.

"About work," says Emily, tugging at Myka's belt, pulling the leather free of the buckle. "About me... _Oh_ , _God_ , _please_ _keep_ _doing_ _that_... About what I've been doing. At Warehouse."

Then Emily's hand is at her zipper, dragging down, and Myka has just about the presence of mind to think, _fuck_ _Artie_ before she stops thinking altogether.

Later, she'll remember that she _did_ speak, that she _did_ reply; that Emily tried again to tell her whatever she wanted to tell her, to confess whatever she needed to confess.

"Don't tell me," she'll remember herself saying. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know, alright? I don't want to know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The daftness of this chapter is very much the product of a conversation with kellsbells about the nature of Englishness in US media contexts. There are - I promise - no references to the Carry On films anywhere in The Secret Of My Success (or Working Girl, or any other of the other 80s workplace comedies this bit of silliness draws on). 
> 
> There is, however, a chain of ice cream parlours inspired by Are You Being Served? in the Bay Area, and I like to think they might have gone there for dessert.


	11. Austin

This time Helena expects guilt – a blast furnace of it, stripping her skin and pulling the air from her lungs. Dimly, as she falls asleep - Myka curled against her back, Myka's arm around her - she prepares for it; waits to feel the flaying heat of it as it tears through her.

 

She's surprised, when she wakes, to feel not just the absence of guilt but an active pleasure, the beginnings of happiness. She feels, in fact, quite wonderful - better than she has in months. The knowledge of what she’s done is there, but it's muted, dull at the edges; a toothache through a cloud of Lidocaine. It’s there, but it doesn't burn.

 

"Morning," says Myka, still pressed against her, nose now buried in the crook of Helena's neck.

 

"Good morning. Have you been awake long?"

 

Myka shifts; wraps a leg around Helena's thigh.

 

"A little while. I've been struggling to move, though."

 

"Is it later than it feels?"

 

"Just after six. You're fine."

 

Helena relaxes, reaching back to pull Myka closer.

 

There's still time, she thinks, for honesty. She can still admit her wrongdoing; explain herself, beg forgiveness. Myka clearly already suspects _something_ ; she need only confirm her suspicions, speak the unspeakable.

 

The question remains, though, of _why_ Myka refused to listen the night before; why she insisted so fervently on not knowing. And what it was, moreover, that she didn't want to hear.

 

"Do we need to talk about last night?" she says.

 

"Which part?"

 

"I was trying to tell you something. Before... this. I think perhaps I should tell you now."

 

Myka brings what feels like her forehead to rest against Helena’s back.

 

"Can you look at me for a second?" she says.

 

Helena turns to face her.

 

"Whatever it is," Myka says, "it doesn't matter, okay? I don't need to know."

 

"Nevertheless, I want to be honest with you."

 

"That doesn't mean you have to tell me everything. Especially not when it comes to Warehouse. In fact it's probably better that you don't - that we keep a bit of distance between this and what we are at work."

 

"You don't think that what we do at work affects... this?"

 

"I really don't want it to. This feels straightforward. Work is... more complicated."

 

"Straightforward?" says Helena.

 

Myka kisses her, gently.

 

"The good kind of straightforward. Easy. I like you, and your pencils and your air of mystery. I like that I can't work out whether I find you debonair or completely ridiculous. I like this. So can you just... _let_ me like this? Please?"

 

I would love to, Helena thinks.

 

She kisses back harder; draws Myka's leg back up to her hip.

 

"The trouble is," she says, moving downwards, "I'm not entirely who you think I am."

 

"You don't know who it is I think you are," says Myka, tilting her hips.

 

\------

 

"You look guilty again," says Claudia when Helena makes it - 90 minutes late - into the office.

 

"I look nothing of the sort. And what are you doing with those?"

 

She has the same two laptops as before open on Helena's desk; one displaying what Helena recognises as work-in-progress designs for Janus, the second a headshot of a fiftysomething man in a shirt and tie, smiling nervously at the camera.

 

"Looking," says Claudia.

 

"Looking for what? Is that a personnel file?"

 

"I need a false trail. A fall guy. For Jinksy."

 

"Did Pete give you access to those records?"

 

"Pete? No way. Don't get me wrong, I could probably have bribed him with pastry... but it's more fun like this. Though actually not that much more fun - the security on these is kind of a joke."

 

"Who is that man on the screen? Do you know him?"

 

"This is Tim. He does something not very interesting for Client Services."

 

"And for this you plan to, what? Frame him as a whistleblower?"

 

"I've gotta give Pete something. He's going crazy. Thinks your uncle Artie's gonna fire him if it he doesn't, you know... find the culprit."

 

"But why this man? Do you know him? Has he wronged you in some way?"

 

"He _is_ sort of a dick, since you mention it. Tried to bounce me out of his department when I first got here. Apparently he found me disagreeable."

 

"Still, I'm not sure that the punishment is commensurate with the crime."

 

"I don't know yet if he's the one. That's why I'm looking - there might be better candidates."

 

"People who have wronged you more thoroughly, perhaps?"

 

"You got it."

 

"I must remember not to incur your wrath in future. You're quite the avenging angel."

 

"More like an instrument of justice. Which brings us right back to guilt, and the look you're wearing right now."

 

"There is no look. And there is no guilt."

 

"You should have been here, like, an hour ago. It doesn't take any great power of deduction to figure out what kept you. Or who. Ergo, assuming she still thinks you're somebody you're not, there is guilt. Big, crazy guilt."

 

"Why are you now the voice of my conscience? You've so many other things to be getting on with. So many acts of vengeance to perform."

 

“I’m more like… an observer.”

 

“Ah. So Pete’s told you what he’s been up to.”

 

“And I barely even _asked_. Seriously, he’s probably the least devious person I’ve ever met. Whoever hired him to do that job is an idiot. Although it’s kinda sweet that he thinks he’s an undercover mastermind.”

 

“Is he involving you in some way in this spying escapade?”

 

“Nah. He’s saving that one for you. You should go see him, by the way – he seemed pretty stressed out this morning. You might need to give him something meatier than ‘get new chairs’.”

 

“You’ve seen him this morning?”

 

“We got breakfast. Well, he did – I was more of a spectator. He’s back in the basement now, brooding. It’s cute, actually – like watching a teddy bear eat a wasp.”

 

“I’ll go down there and have a word with him.”

 

“You should tell him you saw someone stealing paper from the copy tray. Actually, no – stealing food, from literally anywhere. He’ll go from zero to Jessica Fletcher before you can say cronut.”

 

\--------

 

Pacing the floor of the basement, Pete seems to Helena less brooding teddy bear than anxious Lego – jaw squared, brows furrowed.  

 

“It’s over,” he says. “I’m done.”

 

“Why ‘done’? Has something happened?”

 

“I have to go to Austin. Next week.”

 

“I may need more information, if I’m to grasp the true horror of that statement.”

 

“Mrs. Frederic. She’s putting on this… workshop. Or bunch of workshops, I guess – looks like there’s a few of ‘em. And she wants me there.”

 

“You still have me at a loss. Why is this so dreadful?”

 

“She’ll want answers! And I got nothing.”

 

“About this blog business?”

 

“What else? Artie’s been putting the corkscrews on me all week.”

 

“Thumbscrews.”

 

“Thumbscrews, corkscrews… Doesn’t matter, it’s over. Even Claudia can’t help me. I’m gonna go to Austin, and I’m gonna tell them I got nothing, and Mrs. Frederic is gonna… _watch_ me over the top of those little glasses she wears, and that’ll be it. My ass will be out the door.”

 

“Nothing bad is going to happen to you. She’s probably just hoping for a report on your progress. Didn’t you say you’d only been in this job for a month?”

 

“Can’t be. ‘Senior Leadership Summit,’ it said on the invite. Senior. H.G., I am _not_ senior. I’m… mid-range, at best. You know that mug that says ‘World’s Okayest Employee’? That’s me. Okay is where I _live_. So it’s gotta be the blog, hasn’t it? There’s literally no other reason she’d want me there.”  

 

“Then give Claudia a few more days. I’m sure she’ll find you something.”

 

“And what if she doesn’t?”

 

“If she doesn’t, we’ll think of something else to tell Mrs. Frederic when the time comes.”

 

“We? You want to come with me?”

 

“Absolutely not. What would I do in Austin? I’m practically an office temp.”

 

“The invite said I could bring up to three members of my team. That’s you – _you’re_ my team. And Claudia, maybe. She said she was interning for some guy in Planning – could be he’d let me borrow her.”

 

Helena takes a moment to consider some of the outcomes that might result from her attending, with or without Claudia. None are good.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, “I can’t. I really can’t.”

 

“Please, H.G. You can help me. You’re good at, you know… explaining stuff. You could talk to Mrs. Frederic. Stop her from firing me, or whatever else she’ll do to me if I have to tell her that I haven’t done my job the way she wanted.”

 

“I’m sorry,” she says again.

 

“Please. I need you. Come with me.”

 

She imagines Artie catching sight of her at the buffet table; imagines the look on Myka’s face when she’s introduced to a roomful of delegates not as Emily Lake, Director but as Helena Wells, HR assistant and imposter. Then looks up at Pete and his sad, frightened eyes.

 

“You mentioned,” she says, “that there might be more than one workshop going on that day…?”

 

\-------

 

Just before lunchtime, when Myka pops by for a scheduled update on the absurdly-named Project Eagle, Helena is struck simultaneously by how good it is to see her, even after so little time, and how terrified she is at the now very real prospect of being unmasked – of Myka _finding out_ , Myka _knowing_.

 

This interwoven fear and pleasure is enough to stun her into silence. She should, she knows, say _something_ , but instead she stares – at Myka, her expression (bemused concern, a hint of something she can't parse), her clothes (one of Helena's shirts, jeans from the night before), her hands (empty, tucked awkwardly into her pockets).

 

Myka stares back, the start of a smile creasing the left edge of her mouth.

 

From behind Helena’s desk Claudia sighs, loudly and pointedly, and pulls her headphones over her ears.

 

"How are you?" says Myka, eyes still on Helena.

 

“A little tired. Pleasantly so.”

 

Myka glances over at Claudia and her headphones, then back at Helena.

 

“So, this morning,” she says, “I was on the phone to Janus, and I had this plan to come in and share what they told me and see where you were up to with the designs. Because I _do_ need to know, and I promised I’d get back to them this afternoon, if only so they don’t get their hopes up that we’re building them… I don’t know, a Jabberwocky blimp that runs on peanut oil. But it turns out that it really wasn’t that great of a plan, because now I’m here I pretty much just want to kick Little Miss Helpful out the door and tire you out some more.”

 

“What happened to separating work from… other things? You were quite adamant earlier.”

 

“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” She takes a deep, theatrical step away from Helena. “Tell me about the machine. And I’ll just sit over here and… try not to look at you.”

 

“I’m sorry to say,” says Helena, clearing her throat, “that we haven’t made quite the strides forward we’d hoped. Do we have a firm deadline for delivery?”

 

“Not exactly. But it would be great to have something in place for a week tomorrow, if that’s possible.”

 

“We’ll do what we can.”

 

“Thank you. That way I’ll have something to take with me to Austin.”

 

“To Austin?” says Helena, biting back panic.

 

“Mrs. Frederic’s putting on this… team-building thing next week. Nobody seems to know any more detail than that. I was going to ask whether you were coming, actually. I saw your name on the invite list.”

 

“I couldn’t say – I’ve yet to receive an invitation. And I may have things to do. Here. In the office.”

 

“Refusing to go to Olympus? That’s pretty brave.”

 

“I’ll need to see how things pan out. There’s an… ongoing issue with Human Resources that may need my attention. I would _like_ to go, though,” she adds. “I’ve never been to Texas.”

 

“I wouldn’t expect to see much of it from the inside of the Marriott.”

 

“Still, I’m sure there’ll be some entertainment to be found, if you’re there.”

 

Myka looks again at Claudia, now intently studying a screenshot of a turbine blade, headphones pressed tightly against her face with the palms of her hands.

 

“I really hope she’s playing music through those things,” says Myka.

 

“I’d say we can safely assume that she’d have shown us some reaction if she wasn’t. She isn’t given to reining in her emotions.”

 

“I should probably go anyway – I’m seeing Steve for a catchup over lunch. Dinner later? Or something more imaginative than dinner?”

 

“I would love to.”

 

Claudia watches her leave; slides the headphones back down around her neck.

 

“I think,” she says, “you may have sailed way past guilt and off the cliff into calamity. Danger ahead, H.G. Danger ahead.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This bit is probably more set-up than anything else. 
> 
> It's going somewhere, though. Honestly.


	12. L.A.

Myka steps back from the boards; squints, rubs her temples.

 

"This is all we have?" she says.

 

"Pretty much," says Steve. "And I'm guessing, from the look on your face, that it's as bad as I thought."

 

She leans in; re-reads the copy options overlaid on each photograph.

 

"They're all in haiku," she says finally.

 

"Not all of them. Some are just... economical. Imagist."

 

"'Way down in the roots, pain emanates; gums bleed red. Floss deeper with Wax.' Who wrote this?"

 

"The new guy, Gunther. He's a little prone to... flourishes."

 

"I can't use these. They're unusable. And who took these pictures?"

 

"Gunther's partner. The new Art Director. They came together, as a package. From Manchester, I think."

 

"These are Mapplethorpes, Steve. They’re BDSM. The floss should _not_ be tied around the tooth like that."

 

"Maybe if we reshot them in colour..."

 

"Then we'd _really_ see the blood. I can't take these to the client, you have to know that."

 

"I'll get Gunther back in. See if I can... redirect his energy. We might have to get another photographer on board for the pack shot, though. I've seen the other stuff this guy's been working on. No refrigerator should look like that."

 

"Maybe we should... move on, for now. Come back to this later."

 

"Fine by me. Where are we on Project Eagle?"

 

"Emily and Claudia are still working on it. They should be able to get something to us before Austin."

 

"Is she coming to Austin? Emily?"

 

"She's not sure. Maybe."

 

Myka pulls back the smile that threatens to overwhelm her face, just a second too late.

 

"That answers that question, then," says Steve, slyly. "I guess the date went well."

 

"Pretty well, I think. She's... different than I'm used to."

 

"Good different?"

 

"I hope so. I like her a lot, you know?"

 

"I'm glad to hear it. And no more worrying about what Artie might think?"

 

"I don't know. Maybe. She's definitely got secrets."

 

"Who doesn't? It's what you get for being in the world. You go looking for a consenting adult with no skeletons in the closet and you'll be out there for a long, long time."

 

"Do you think she _is_ different? For me, I mean."

 

"Different than who? She Who Must Not Be Named?"

 

Myka nods.

 

"Yes," he says, more seriously. "I might not know much about her, but I like your odds here. You need to trust your own judgment."

 

"Because that worked out so well for me last time?"

 

"You couldn't have known last time. She actively lied to you. And I can absolutely, hand-on-my-heart guarantee you that Emily doesn't have a boyfriend waiting in the wings."

 

"There's no way you can say that for sure."

 

"Myka, I've _seen_ her. You're very, very safe. And as a not-unrelated sidebar: is that her shirt you're wearing?"

 

"I think it might be time to give Gunther a call."

 

"Alright. But a heads up: he talks like that, too."

 

\-----

 

"And that was Gunther."

 

"He's sort of... exhausting, isn't he? I'm sure I saw him counting syllables under his breath."

 

"He knows what he likes, I'll say that."

 

She gathers up the boards; lays them face-down on the conference table.

 

"What do you have on now?" she says.

 

"Now? Nothing. Emails, probably. You?"

 

"I'm in with Artie. I think he wants to put together a game plan for Austin, so he doesn't end up wrong-footed."

 

"Rather you than me. Listen, though: I meant what I said about Emily. Everybody has secrets. Secrets don't automatically make you untrustworthy."

 

"You say that with such authority."

 

"I know what I'm talking about here. Just... trust yourself, okay?"

 

\-----

 

Artie's isn't in his office, and his PA isn't at her desk.

 

Myka takes a seat in the waiting area outside, sinking back into a chair the shape and colour of a candy cane.

 

There's someone else waiting there, too: a tense-looking man in combat pants, his square body squeezed onto a pink speckled ottoman. He's probably close to forty, she thinks, but carries himself like a teenager. There's a Hershey's Kisses wrapper poking out of one of his pockets.

 

"Are you here for Artie?" she says.

 

The man jumps, just a little, at the question.

 

"Yeah," he says uncertainly. "He called me up here, but then he wasn't, you know... _here_ himself. So I figured I'd wait."

 

"He should be here soon. I'm seeing him at 4."

 

A minute passes, and he leans in towards her.

 

"The furniture here is crazy, isn't it? I keep wanting to take a bite out it it."

 

"I think it's deliberate," she says leaning in herself, bridging more of the gap between them. "I've always got the idea that Artie likes to keep people a little hungry while they're waiting."

 

"That's pretty sneaky."

 

"He's a pretty sneaky guy."

 

"I'm Pete," says the man, offering a hand.

 

"Myka."

 

"I know. Bering, right? You're sorta famous around here. Plus I think you met a friend of mine once. H.G.?"

 

"H.G.?" she says, confused.

 

"Damn. She'd kill me if she knew I'd been telling people that. _Not_ H.G. - Helena. Helena Wells? A little shorter than me, English? And I mean _English_."

 

"Sorry, I don't think I know her."

 

"Oh. Oh, boy. Okay. Well, you should definitely meet her. You'd like her."

 

He smiles, broad and guileless.

 

"Sure," she says. "Why not?"

 

The elevator dings, the doors open and Artie marches out, PA trailing behind him.

 

"You're here," he says to Myka. "Great. Come in, quick."

 

\-----

 

"I'm going to L.A.," he says, typing rapidly into his computer. "Tonight, probably. Or as soon as I can get on a flight."

 

Myka shifts her weight from one foot to the other. There's nowhere to sit in the office; folders and printouts litter ever seat, every inch of couch space.

 

"Why?" she says.

 

"I'm going to see Janus. First thing Monday."

 

"What about? Has something happened?"

 

"Not yet. But I need to do something, before Irene puts in motion whatever it is that she's planning. I need to know that, if worst comes to worst, they'll come with us. Some of the others, too. The tech accounts, maybe."

 

"Come with us where?"

 

"When we leave Warehouse."

 

"We're leaving Warehouse? When was this decided?"

 

" _If_ , I should have said. _If_ we leave. But we can't stay, not if Irene moves in here. We'll have to start over. Set up on our own."

 

"And you assume I'll just come with you, just like that?"

 

"Well... yeah. Am I wrong?"

 

"I honestly hadn't thought about it."

 

"Really? Not at all? Because, like I said before: if Irene does come over here, things are not going to be comfortable for you. You think she doesn't have people she'll want to bring in? _Her_ people, people loyal to her? All of you, _my_ people - you won't last a month."

 

"Say that's true - how will going to L.A. help? I'm assuming Janus and whoever else you meet with are happy with things as they stand. What would you offer them, without Warehouse?"

 

"You."

 

"Me?"

 

"It's you Janus are happy with - not Warehouse. I've seen the way you handle clients, Myka. They love you. They might not come for me, but they'll come for you. You and Mr. Jinks."

 

"You want to take Steve with you, too?"

 

"I haven't asked him, but yeah, sure. He might not be the best fit for Janus, but on some of the other accounts? There's nobody better."

 

"I think he'd be surprised to hear you say that."

 

"What?"

 

"It doesn't matter. So you're going? Today?"

 

"That's right. And I was hoping you'd come with me."

 

She shakes her head, more on reflex than as a conscious response.

 

"I can't do that, Artie. Not while I'm still working here. Besides, I have plans this weekend."

 

"Fly down on Sunday, then. I don't need you 'til Monday, anyway."

 

"I really don't feel comfortable with this."

 

"What do you have to lose? If nothing happens with Irene, then all you've done is pay a visit to a client to check they still like what we're doing for them. They'll love that we took the time. But if something _does_ happen... we've started the process. Laid the groundwork."

 

She tries to think rationally; to see that what he's saying makes sense, intellectually.

 

"Alright. I'll come Sunday. But just to see them, okay? Just to check in. No hard sell."

 

"None. I swear. Not at this stage."

 

He looks up at her.

 

"I forgot to ask: did you talk to Emily Lake?"

 

Myka flushes.

 

"What?"

 

"You were going to talk to her. Get to know her. See what was going on with her and Irene."

 

"No. I mean, I haven't talked to her. Not about that. There hasn't been time."

 

"Shit. Did you know she's going to Austin?"

 

"I saw her name on the invite. I'm not sure if she's going to be there, though."

 

"Of course she'll be there. It's Irene. Nobody says no to Irene."

 

"Then I guess we'll see her there, won't we?"

 

"Maybe you can fly down with her. Or share a room with her, or something."

 

"Since when do we share rooms? This isn't summer camp."

 

"We need to find a way to get you alone with her. But okay: let me think about it. I’ll see what I can come up with. And we can talk more about it when we get to L.A."

 

\-----

 

Pete's still waiting outside the office when she leaves.

 

"Good to meet you, Myka Bering," he says, as she steps into the elevator.

 

"You too," she says, with even less enthusiasm than she feels.

 


	13. Airborne

At 35,000 feet, Helena struggles to relax. The flight is full, loud and turbulent. Orange juice spills intermittently from the plastic cup in her fold-out tray; suitcases rattle in the overhead lockers, threatening to fall.

 

Beside her, Pete reads, head buried in one of Claudia's magazines. Occasionally he nudges her, waking her from shallow half-sleep to share what he's read, each slice of information gifted with equal, indiscriminate excitement.

 

("Hey, H.G. - have you seen this article? Says you can only ever know 150 people at a time. Maximum, 150! Any more than that, and you can't keep 'em straight in your head. Because of how monkeys touch each other. Do you think that's true? You'd have to watch a _lot_ of monkeys to find that out."

 

And later:

 

"Did you know that women used to pluck out their hair so they'd have bigger foreheads? Big foreheads were the _pinnacle_ of sexiness. Look at this!")

 

Eyes closed and neck pressed back against her narrow seat, she thinks about Myka, and tries not to think about the days ahead.

 

\-----

 

They'd spent the previous weekend at Myka's house, and primarily in Myka's bed - always intending to leave, never quite managing to.

 

Often, they'd talked.

 

"I think I'd forgotten how to do this," Helena had said, stretching her legs across Myka's.

 

"You seem to be doing alright so far."

 

"Not that part. This. This... stillness."

 

"It's not something you're used to?"

 

"Recently? No."

 

"She didn't do stillness?"

 

"She?"

 

"Your - how did you put it? - former person."

 

"She didn't. Or at least, we were never still together. Which perhaps should have given me an indication that things weren't all they should have been."

 

"I'm sorry. Not completely sorry, obviously, because you're here now, and I like you here. But a little sorry."

 

"That seems like an appropriate amount of sorry, under the circumstances. But there's really no need. At the risk of sounding callous - I wasn't terribly broken by what happened between us. The aftermath was much more distressing than anything else. The... acrimony."

 

"Which is what brought you to California."

 

"Yes."

 

"Then it's even harder for me to be sorry."

 

Helena had pulled herself closer; rested her head in the shallow of Myka's neck.

 

"Should I ask," she'd said, "about the woman you mentioned earlier?"

 

"You can ask. There wasn't much stillness there either, though. Just motion. And a lot of furtive scurrying around in between."

 

"An affair?"

 

"In a way. She was a client, and Artie has some pretty firm rules on that kind of thing. She did have someone, but I didn't find that out until later."

 

"I can't imagine that was easy."

 

"Not so much, no. Her someone - he showed up at the office one day. I don't know whether she told him, or whether he'd just figured it out, but it wasn't a great moment for either of us. Thank God Steve was there. He's a really calming influence when he needs to be. He managed to talk the guy down, get him to leave quietly."

 

"And your woman, what did she say about this?"

 

"Nothing. She sort of... cut contact. And dropped Warehouse - we lost the account. Artie still doesn't know why, I don't think."

 

"Do you have anything of hers here? I feel a sudden urge to do violence to her possessions."

 

Myka had laughed; kissed the top of Helena's head.

 

"It's been a while - I'm not sure there's much left you could do violence to. But I appreciate the gesture. Besides, it wasn't all her fault. I should have known better. When someone doesn't ever let you see the inside of their apartment, there's probably something there they don't want you to see. Or someone."

 

A wave of guilt had passed over her, and she'd shuddered, very slightly, pressing herself into Myka's side until the feeling passed.

 

"Hey, it's okay," Myka had said, wrapping an arm tighter around her. "Like I said, it's been a while."

 

"I would very much like to not be that person for you," Helena had said quietly.

 

"Then don't be. Just... don't be."

 

\-----

 

"Is she asleep?"

 

"I don't know. She hasn't said anything in a while."

 

"Should we wake her up before we land?"

 

"Maybe. I was kinda hoping we could go over what to say tomorrow."

 

"Then wake her."

 

"I don't know, Claude. She's been pretty cranky the last few days. I don't know if she'll like being woken up."

 

"She works for you! She's your _employee_."

 

"Technically, maybe. But she could still kick my ass. Do you know she knows karate?"

 

"It's not karate. It's something else. Something with throwing and rolling."

 

"I don't want her to throw me. Or roll on me. You should do it."

 

"There's just no way, dude. And you're closer."

 

Helena opens her eyes. Claudia stands over her, blocking the aisle. Pete is staring at her, his face inches from hers.

 

"What," she says, with all the authority she can muster, "are you doing?"

 

"Waiting for you to wake up," says Pete sheepishly.

 

"And why is it so imperative that I am awake on this voyage of the damned?"

 

"Never flown coach, huh?" says Claudia.

 

"We thought it might be good to talk," says Pete. "About what to say to Mrs Frederic," he adds in a whisper.

 

"In Austin," says Helena. "We can talk when we get there. Over dinner. With something stronger than room-temperature fruit juice in a child's beaker to sustain me."

 

"Very cranky," says Claudia to Pete.

 

"Goodnight," says Helena, leaning back against the headrest, closing her eyes.

 

\------

 

Late Saturday night, Helena had offered to cook.

 

" _Can_ you cook?" Myka had said. "I've seen your kitchen. Seemed pretty empty."

 

"Certainly I can cook. And I'd tidied specifically in anticipation of your visit. Hence the emptiness of the cupboards."

 

"You cleaned up for me?"

 

"In a manner of speaking, yes. I didn't want you to think that I lived in squalor."

 

"I didn't, before. I just assumed you lived off takeout. _Now_ I think you live in squalor. Except when you're trying to pick up women."

 

"I'm very close to retracting this omelette."

 

"I'm sorry. Please, make me the omelette. Kitchen's down the stairs, through the living room. It's the one with the oven and the refrigerator."

 

"It's as if you don't _want_ the omelette."

 

"I do. I really do."

 

In the semi-darkness of the hallway, Helena - Myka's dressing gown tight around her waist - had tripped and stumbled, her foot connecting with a stack of hardbacks by the staircase bannister. She'd sworn, fulsomely.

 

"Jesus, are you okay?" Myka had said, flicking on the light on her way out of the bedroom.

 

"I believe I may have just lost a toe to... what is this? Prototype Theory. Prototype Theory has claimed my toe."

 

"Straight for the subordinate term there. Interesting."

 

"Was that a joke?"

 

"Barely. Sorry."

 

"My toe is _hanging_ off my foot."

 

"I'm sorry. Should I get you some ice?"

 

"Yes. Please."

 

"Come down to the kitchen. I can carry you. If you need me to."

 

"Shouldn't you put clothes on?"

 

"For whose benefit, exactly?"

 

"Good point. Fine, then. Please take me to the ice."

 

Myka had half-supported, half-carried Helena down the stairs; had laid her down on the sofa; had brought her a pack of frozen vegetables to hold against her foot; had sat for half an hour on the hard, uncomfortable arm of the couch while Helena winced and grimaced at the cold, and then again at the swelling.

 

"You're kind of melodramatic, aren't you?" Myka had said, running fingers through Helena's hair.

 

"I am _injured_ ," Helena had said, arching back into the touch.

 

"You are lightly bruised. And you're ridiculous," Myka had said, pressing another kiss to the top of her head.

 

Around that time, Helena had thought: it's possible I'm falling a little in love with you. And then, more definitively, to herself: I will tell her. I will tell her tomorrow.

 

\------

 

"I know you're awake," Claudia says.

 

"Where is Pete, and why are you in his seat?" Helena says, eyes resolutely closed.

 

"We traded. He's back there somewhere. I wanted to talk to you."

 

"About what? Keeping in mind that I am very nearly asleep."

 

"This summit thing, what else? Or workshop. Whatever they're calling it now."

 

"What about it?"

 

"You going. It's a really, really bad idea."

 

"I am very aware of that, thank you."

 

"But you're going anyway."

 

"It appears so, yes."

 

"Do you have a plan?"

 

"A plan?"

 

"To keep from getting caught."

 

"Can you please keep your voice down?"

 

"Like anyone can hear me over that guy's snoring. So, have you?"

 

"There is no need for a _plan_ , or anything else so elaborate. The workshops are divided by business function, and there are at least three running concurrently. Pete and I will be in one; Myka and Steve, and I suppose Artie, will be in another. There will be no crossover."

 

"And you're gonna, what? Hide in your room the rest of the time?"

 

"I will be working on the Janus designs. Possibly, yes, from my room."

 

"I thought we sent those off to Jinksy yesterday?"

 

"Those were placeholders - I'm still not altogether happy with the outcome. We can do better."

 

"I'm worried about you, H.G. All of this... I'm not sure you can pull it off."

 

"Please don't be. I have the situation in hand."

 

"I'm not sure that you do, is the thing. I'm really not sure that you do."

 

\------

 

On Sunday morning, showered and dressed and sitting opposite Myka at the kitchen table, Helena had confessed.

 

"I've been lying to you," she'd said. "And I'm so very sorry."

 

Myka had said nothing; only stared down at her coffee.

 

"I've been lying to you," Helena had said again.

 

"I know," Myka had said quietly.

 

"You know?"

 

"Yeah. I've known for a while."

 

"How?"

 

"It doesn't matter."

 

Helena had risen from her chair; moved around the table to crouch down beside Myka, to hold her hand.

 

"What I've done... it has absolutely no bearing on anything that's gone on between us. Please believe me when I say that."

 

When Myka hadn't replied, Helena had ploughed on, steeling herself for a reaction.

 

"It was only ever about work, this... pretending. And I had no intention of things getting quite so out of hand. I certainly had no intention of deliberately misleading you. This weekend has been... rather a revelation, actually. And if I've hurt you, through my own stupidity..."

 

"Can you stop talking? Please?"

 

Myka had stood up from the table, almost knocking Helena backwards as she rose.

 

"You didn't have to tell me," she'd said.

 

"I really think I did," Helena had said, standing up to face her.

 

"Then I wish you hadn't. Because now I know."

 

"You said that you already knew."

 

"But now you've confirmed it. Which means I have to do something about it. I have to act on the information you've given me."

 

"I understand," Helena had said, sadly. "Will you tell Steve?"

 

"Steve? Why would I tell Steve?"

 

"Someone else, then. Someone more senior."

 

"I don't know. I need to think."

 

"I should leave you."

 

"No. I mean, not yet. I have to pack soon anyway. I'm on a flight to L.A. at three o'clock."

 

"You're going away? What about Austin?"

 

"It's only for a few days. I'll still make it. Are _you_ going?"

 

"Yes."

 

"To see Mrs. Frederic."

 

"God, you really _do_ know everything. Yes. Though I have no idea what we'll say to her."

 

"We? There are more of you?"

 

"Three of us. Why?"

 

"Three? I guess Artie really wasn't that paranoid after all."

 

"What do you mean?"

 

"Nothing. Forget it."

 

"I really am so sorry," she'd said, stepping forward into Myka's space. Myka hadn't moved away.

 

"I believe you," Myka had said. "I just wish that helped."

 

\-----

 

"Now it's definitely you that's nearer. Go ahead, do it."

 

Helena feels a hand on her shoulder, shaking her.

 

"Yes?" she says.

 

"Time to wake up, H.G.," Claudia says.

 

"Is it?" she says.

 

She opens her eyes. The flight, she sees, is now almost empty, the cabin unmoving.

 

"Yep," says Pete, poking his head around from the seat in front. "We're here. Just landed.”

 

“Welcome to Texas,” says Claudia, ominously.

 


	14. Elevator

Helena doesn't hide. She may, she tells herself, occasionally beat a strategic retreat; may retire somewhere quiet and far removed from immediate stresses - another continent, say, or an empty office at the end of a corridor. But she doesn't _hide_.

 

Cowards hide, she thinks. Cowards slide themselves into unoccupied booths, duck behind pillars, press themselves against walls to avoid unwanted attention. Not her.

 

Not usually.

 

"What are you doing?" says Pete, as she slips - inconspicuously, she hopes inconspicuously - into a high-backed chair outside the conference room, its back shielding her from public view.

 

"Waiting for the session to open," she says, glancing over her shoulder at the hotel lobby. She sees a handful of Warehouse people, men and women she recognises from the office, but Artie, Steve... they're nowhere to be seen. If Myka has done as she'd suggested - if she's _acted_ on the knowledge of Helena's deception - then the moment of confrontation is still to come.

 

And if that moment can be delayed until she's left this place, until she's back on almost-familiar turf…

 

"Are you sure?" says Pete. "Cause you've been sorta weird and stealthy since we got here. Is there someone you're avoiding?"

 

"Don't be absurd."

 

"Last night you ran into the bathroom and stayed there for 20 minutes when those guys from Marketing came in. I had two desserts while we were waiting for you."

 

"It wasn't 20 minutes."

 

"Two desserts, H.G. And one of them was pie."

 

"I'm perfectly fine. And my behaviour has been perfectly ordinary."

 

"What about this morning at breakfast? Last night we thought you were, you know... sick. I didn't feel so good myself after the second round of crabcakes. But Claudia said when she went to look for you in the bathroom you were just... standing there in front of the mirror with the faucet running. Like you were hiding."

 

"Who on earth would I be hiding from?"

 

"That's what we can't figure out. But someone, for sure. Someone here."

 

He looks down at her appraisingly.

 

"Is it that lady, Myka?" he says. "Did something happen with her? I know she's here - I saw her in the elevator with Artie just now."

 

She considers an outright lie, then decides against it. Lying, she thinks, may have had its day. She ignores the palpable increase in her heart rate at the mention of Myka's name.

 

"Alright, yes," she says. "Possibly something happened with that lady, Myka. And possibly I am keen to not bump into her as a result."

 

"Oh, man. What did you do?"

 

"I think, on the whole, I would prefer not to talk about it."

 

He squats down next to her; puts a consolatory hand on her thigh.

 

"Was it bad?" he says.

 

"Rather monumentally so, I'm afraid."

 

"Was it your fault?"

 

"Yes. Entirely."

 

"Is there anything you can do to fix it?"

 

"I suspect not."

 

He stands up; motions for her to move across the seat, then sits down beside her.

 

"Want me to hide with you for a little bit?" he says.

 

"You know," she says, "I think I might, actually."

 

\------

 

The workshop - Perspectives On Dispute Resolution And Contract Termination - takes up much of the morning, and leaves Helena simultaneously baffled and fearful.

 

Mrs. Frederic is conspicuously absent throughout.

 

"She must be in with one of the other groups," says Pete.

 

"I thought seeing her was the whole point of us being here," says Claudia. "Or why did I just sit through a three hour lecture on all the ways I might get fired?"

 

"I'm sure she'll put in an appearance this afternoon," says Helena. "I believe we're 'going deeper' into intranet platform innovations. Only a fool would miss it."

 

"I don't know what I'm gonna tell her," says Pete.

 

("What happened to your false trail?" Helena had asked Claudia the evening before, during one of Pete's trips to the salad bar.

 

"Couldn't do it," Claudia had said. "I got guilty. I know you know how that goes. We'll just have to find some other way to get Jinksy off the hook").

 

"I think I may go for a quick lie down in my room before the next session," says Helena.

 

"Stay here with us," says Pete. "We can go get lunch at the taco place down the street - we don't have to eat in the hotel."

 

"Or we can come up there with you," says Claudia. "Get room service."

 

"I'd really rather be alone, if you don't mind," says Helena.

 

Pete shoots Claudia an anxious look.

 

"Maybe we could walk you up, then?" he says. "Make sure you, you know... get there."

 

"I'm on the fourteenth floor. I will not be walking."

 

"Even better," says Claudia. "I hate walking. We'll ride up with you."

 

"There's really no need for this... coddling. I'm more than equipped to survive an hour in my own company."

 

"We're still coming," says Claudia. Pete nods vigorously.

 

They cross the lobby together, Pete and Claudia flanking her on either side. She calls the elevator; looks forward, as she pushes the button for her floor, to losing herself in the forgiving anonymity of a clean, cold room.

 

Then, just as the doors are closing, Artie, Steve and Myka step inside after them.

 

_Of course_ , thinks Helena. _Of course this is how it's going to happen_.

 

"Hello, Artie," she says. And the doors slide shut.

 

\------

 

Myka hasn't slept through the night since Sunday - Emily's admission and Artie's escalating hostility towards Mrs. Frederic warring for space in her head. By Tuesday, after two full days in L.A. and an endless succession of client breakfasts, client lunches, client dinners, she's exhausted, close to collapse.

 

"You don't look so good," says Artie on the Wednesday morning. "Something wrong?"

 

"Tired," she says.

 

"Go to bed early tonight, okay?" he says, not unkindly. "I need you good to go on Friday."

 

She's yet to tell him about Emily - who she is, what's she's doing at Warehouse. This is, she's realized, at least in part because she doesn't know exactly what she'd say.

 

Not:

 

_You know when you asked me to spy on the new Design Director, and I told you I wouldn't do it? I've been sleeping with her. We spent this last weekend together, and it was all kinds of incredible, and then, just before I flew out here, she made this overblown confession over the eggs and oatmeal, and it turns out you were right - she_ is _a plant._

 

And absolutely not:

 

_Emily Lake is everything you were afraid she might be. She's definitely working against you. It's worse than you think, though, because I seem to have these very confusing but really quite strong feelings for her - so maybe don't ask me to choose between you, because I'm not sure right now which way that would go._

 

"I will," she says. "I promise."

 

They make it to Austin late Thursday evening. At the hotel, Myka goes straight to her room, straight to bed. She lies awake until 3am, mourning the hours lost to the new time zone, cursing her body's unwillingness to settle.

 

Friday morning's Creative Planning session is nebulously titled New Cultural Synergies.

 

"What does that mean?" says Myka. "What cultures are we synergizing?"

 

"The US and England?" says Steve with a grin, easing himself into the seat beside her.

 

"California and Texas," says Artie, too quietly for Steve to hear. "It's Irene priming us for the takeover. She's moving West."

 

"Then where is she?" says Myka. "I don't see her anywhere."

 

"She's here," says Artie. "Somewhere. Watching us."

 

("Is it me, or is he even more agitated than usual?" says Steve to Myka during the coffee break. "He looks... twitchy. Ready to pop."

 

"It's not you," says Myka, draining her third espresso of the morning).

 

The session unfolds as a moderated discussion around cultural difference, and how to bridge it.

 

("Do they know we’re from San Francisco?" Steve whispers in her ear).

 

Myka drifts in and out of the conversation; playing back memories of the weekend, then chastising herself for her weakness.

 

(She remembers Emily laid out across her couch, frozen peas clutched to her stubbed toe, her face a theatrical simulacrum of agony.

 

"You're ridiculous," she'd said. And she'd meant it, but she'd also meant: it's kind of endearing, this ludicrousness. It's private; it's mine. You're ludicrous _for me_.

 

"Your books are entirely too heavy," Emily had said. "Do you read nothing more lightweight, nothing with fewer pages? Is it too much to expect that you might stockpile airport fiction by your staircase? Perhaps the odd bit of chick lit?"

 

"You know, if you'd hit the lights on your way down, you'd have avoided all the books. Heavy _and_ light."

 

"I didn't think it necessary. My overnight stays rarely require me to negotiate literary warrens in the dead of night."

 

"It's 9.45. You really are the queen of hyperbole. And you do a lot of them, these overnight stays?"

 

She'd tried to keep the levity, the playfulness - to keep the insecurity out of her voice. Evidently she'd failed, because Emily had twisted around on the couch and towards her; had looked up at her seriously, intensely.

 

"Not a lot," she'd said. "Not like this").

 

When the session ends, Artie beckons to her and Steve.

 

"We need a strategy in place," he says. "For this afternoon. Come up to my room - I have some ideas."

 

They follow him out into the lobby, into the closing doors of an elevator.

 

It takes a second for her to realize that they're not alone in there; that Emily's in there too, and Claudia the intern, and the hungry guy from Artie's office, Pete.

 

Emily's eyes flick from her to Artie; she's nervous, afraid. _I didn't tell him_ , Myka wants to say; _he doesn't know_.

 

"Hello, Artie," Emily says.

 

"Helena?" Artie says. "What the hell are you doing here?"

 

"Helena?" says Myka, confused. "Who's Helena?"

 

\------

 

"My niece," says Artie, gesturing at Helena.

 

"Emily's your niece?" says Myka.

 

"This is Helena," says Artie. "She works in Human Resources."

 

"No," says Myka. "This is Emily Lake. She's working with me and Steve on the Janus launch."

 

Artie takes a step closer to Helena, threateningly.

 

"Let me get this straight," he says, his teeth clenching. "Helena is Emily Lake?"

 

_And this_ , Helena thinks, watching Myka's face shift from bewilderment to horrified realisation, _is worse, far worse than I'd imagined it would be_.

 

"Yes," says Helena. "Helena is Emily. Emily is Helena."

 

" _This_ is what you did?" says Pete to Helena.

 

The lift comes to a stop at the fourteenth floor. None of them move.

 

"You're not Emily Lake?" Myka says.

 

"No," says Helena.

 

"But there is _an_ Emily Lake?"

 

"Yes. I'm just... not her."

 

"So you've just been, what?" says Artie. "Passing yourself off as this other woman? Jesus, Helena."

 

"But you were helping us," says Steve. "With Janus. With the designs. How were you doing that, if you're not her?"

 

"It's what I did," says Helena. "Before this. I made things. Designed them."

 

"She's Helena Wells, man," says Claudia. "She's a genius."

 

"You knew this?" says Steve to Claudia. "You knew who she was, and you didn't tell us?"

 

"That's not all I know, Jinksy," says Claudia. "So back off."

 

"What does _that_ mean?" says Pete.

 

"Helena Wells," says Myka. "I know you. I mean, I know that name. You and your team, in London - you were in the news last year with, what was it? Some sort of digital climbing hook?"

 

"The Grappler," says Claudia.

 

"Myka..." says Helena.

 

"Don't," says Myka.

 

"Obviously it goes without saying that you're fired," says Artie to Helena. Then, to Myka and Steve: "Do I need to call the lawyers? How much client contact has she had?"

 

"None," says Myka. "She never met with Janus. There's no liability there."

 

"Alright," says Artie, re-opening the doors, walking out onto the fourteenth floor. "Steve, Myka - come with me. I need you to tell me exactly what's been happening with this Janus work. Helena - you're gone. You come within 500 feet of me or the office and I'll have you arrested. And you, whoever you are," he says to Claudia.

 

"Myka, please," says Helena, reaching for Myka's arm.

 

"Don't," says Myka again.

 

She steps away, following Artie out of the elevator.

 

"I should go," says Steve to Helena. "Sorry."

 

He walks out, behind Artie and Myka, leaving Helena, Pete and Claudia alone in the lift.

 

The doors close.

 

"I don't completely understand what just happened here," says Pete, "but it's really not good, is it?"

 


	15. Steps

In her room, hunched over a sketch pad on a crisp white bedspread, Helena works.

 

"You don't have to keep doing that, H.G.," says Claudia, not looking up from her tablet. "I don't think anybody's gonna use anything we give them at this point."

 

"It helps," says Helena.

 

And it does. She may not, she reasons, be able to repair any of the damage she's caused - to fix things with Myka, or regain Pete's trust, or have Claudia reinstated. But she can work. She can always work.

 

("Don't worry about it," Claudia had said. "Me and advertising... It wouldn't have worked out anyway. I'm more of a maker than a talker."

 

"Can I at least give you a reference?" Helena had offered. "Worthless as that may be now."

 

"If you really wanna make it up to me, then take me with you, wherever you end up. Make me your apprentice, or something."

 

"I wouldn't recommend casting your lot in with mine at the moment. I'm likely more hindrance than help."

 

"Let me be the judge of that, okay? Something tells me you'll land on your feet").

 

Working also precludes thinking, and remembering, and sustained self-examination - and for this, Helena is grateful. She'd imagined, before, that the guilt would be the worst of it: the sick, roiling certainty of having lied and misled, of having been _that_ person. Now she knows better.

 

"Are those what I think they are?" Claudia says, pointing to the sketches.

 

"It's a new design," says Helena quietly. "For Janus."

 

"So you can redeem yourself."

 

Helena says nothing.

 

"It's okay, I get it," Claudia says. "You want to woo her back with a killer idea. Say sorry with invention."

 

"I know it isn't so easy."

 

"Doesn't mean it's a bad place to start. Even for me it’s kind of hot, the things you can do with a pen and paper. I've got a feeling Pete might need a different approach, though. I think you might really have hurt him."

 

"I know," says Helena.

 

"Do you still want to leave this afternoon?"

 

"I think it's safest for everyone, don't you?"

 

"Your call." She turns the tablet towards Helena. "There's a flight out of here at 5. We can be on it, if we leave now."

 

\-----

 

"So you were never actually observing anything?" Pete had said. "The whole time, you were up there in that office, making stuff up?"

 

In the immediate aftermath of the scene in the lift, Helena's anxieties had centred on Myka: her reactions, her feelings, what Helena might _do_ about it all. Pete's feelings, Pete's reactions - these hadn't troubled her. Beyond an ill-defined sense that he too might be due an apology, he'd barely figured in her inner inventory of wrongdoing.

 

It had surprised her, then, to see that he was not just confused by her revelation -

as she might perhaps have expected, had she given it any thought at all - but visibly distressed, his upset laced with anger.

 

"You were supposed to be helping me," he'd said. "We were supposed to be a team."

 

"I don't know what more I can say," she'd said, "beyond that I'm sorry. I didn't intend to deceive you."

 

"I told you I was worried about getting fired. And now I'm probably gonna be, because of all this."

 

"That's not true. I'm entirely to blame; everyone involved knows that."

 

"You think Artie cares? It's guilt by association. I was there, so I did it. And next time he sees me, he'll remember."

 

"Again, I am so very sorry."

 

He'd leaned back against the corridor wall, stared down at his feet; he couldn't, she'd thought, even look at her as he was speaking.

 

"What about the blog? You and Claudia, when you were meant to be looking for the guy - did you actually look, or just pretend to? Is that why we never found anything?"

 

"We looked. Or rather, Claudia looked. Very thoroughly, as I understand it."

 

"But she still didn't find anything."

 

She hadn't replied, staring down instead at her own feet, at the carpet, at anything but the look on his face as he asked.

 

"Oh my God," he'd said. "You know. You know who it is."

 

"Not for sure," she'd said. "There were certain... indicators. Clues. Pointing to who it might have been. But we couldn't say for certain."

 

"You know. You _knew_. And you didn't tell me. Even when I was begging you for something to give Artie. You were fine with letting me think you'd got nothing."

 

"It wasn't my place to say. Or Claudia's."

 

" _Claudia_ knows too? Well, that’s perfect. Good to know you've both been lying to me. Will you tell me who it is now, at least?"

 

"I can't. I'm sorry."

 

"I thought we were friends," he'd said.

 

"We are friends. Of course we are."

 

"No," he'd said, shaking her off, walking away from her. "This isn't what friends do. How do you not know that?"

 

\------

 

Helena works on the plane. She works in the cab back to her apartment; at her desk, by the window; in bed, until she falls asleep, the pencil still in her hand. She works feverishly, unthinkingly, her fingers racing to capture the shapes and dimensions in her head before they scatter and fade.

 

By early Saturday, she's sketched the barest bones of a prototype - one which, she thinks, could actually work, could genuinely delight. When it's finished, she sees traces of Myka in every line, playing out across every shadow.

 

At 9am, she scans the sketches and mails them across to Claudia with a request for help; by midday, she has a fleshed-out 3D model. She compresses the file; drafts an email from her still-functional Warehouse account; attaches the file; presses send.

 

And then, exhausted, she falls back to sleep, duvet wrapped protectively around her.

 

\-----

 

She's woken by a loud, syncopated creaking from the steps outside, and again half a minute later by a knock at her door.

 

Pete stands in the doorway, red-eyed and unshaven, tugging a small, wheeled suitcase behind him.

 

"Claudia called me," he says.

 

"Come in," she says, opening the door wider. “Please.”

 

"You don't have a couch," he says, scanning the apartment.

 

"You're welcome to sit on the bed. Sorry it's a little... unmade."

 

"You don't look good," he says, manoeuvring himself onto the edge of the mattress. "I've never seen you... rumpled before. Or like you could use a shower."

 

"It's been rather a long 24 hours. What time is it now?"

 

"Just after 3. I came straight from the airport."

 

"How was the other workshop, yesterday? Did it go well?"

 

"Hard to say. I wasn’t there."

 

"Why not?" she says, concern filing the question to a sharper point than she intends.

 

"Turns out I wasn't invited."

 

"I don't understand."

 

"I bumped into Mrs. Frederic on my way down there. In the elevator," he adds, grimacing.

 

"What happened?"

 

"Nothing, really. She was very polite. Sort of scary - I mean, she really knows how to _load_ a word, you know? But polite."

 

"Then what was the problem?"

 

"She had no idea who I was. And when I started talking... I've never seen anyone so intimidating look so confused before. Did you know there's a Director in the Marketing team called Peter Lautner? He's some sort of big data wizard. Great guy, apparently. Didn't get his invite to Austin."

 

"Oh, Pete - I am sorry."

 

"It's fine. I mean, it was kinda embarrassing, but she was nice enough about it."

 

For want of something to do, Helena walks across to the kitchen and fills the kettle.

 

"You mentioned that Claudia called you?" she says, over the rushing of the tap.

 

"Yeah. Early this morning, before breakfast. Even earlier for her, I guess."

 

"She seems to have evolved beyond sleep."

 

"She told me why you didn't say anything, about the blog. That it was for a good reason. That you were protecting her friend."

 

"I wasn't my intention to do so at your expense."

 

"I know that now. And I know you weren't trying to pull the wool over my eyes about the other stuff. It all just sorta snowballed, right?"

 

"Yes. Not that it should be any excuse."

 

"You were chasing after a girl, and you did something stupid. I get it."

 

He stands up from the bed, walks towards her.

 

"I was an asshole yesterday," he says. "I'm sorry."

 

"You have nothing to apologise for," she says, handing him a mug of coffee over the kitchen counter.

 

"Are you okay?"

 

"I don't think I have any right to claim to be otherwise, do you? Given what I've done."

 

"Have you seen her since... you know, then? Myka, I mean."

 

"No."

 

"Could you maybe still make it right? Try to explain things to her?"

 

"I think she got a reasonable sense of what's been going on in the lift yesterday. I thought she knew already," she adds sadly.

 

"You shouldn't just give up. I was in that elevator too - I saw how she looked when she put two and two together. You don't look like that if you don't care."

 

"She doesn't need my justifications."

 

He drops the mug down onto the countertop, hard enough to spill coffee onto the marble.

 

"Now _you're_ being the asshole. Seriously."

 

She picks up a cloth and wipes around the spill.

 

"You do this really shitty thing," he says, more angry than before, "and you lie to all these people that you say you care about - and then you're just gonna sit around here feeling sorry for yourself and stewing in your own guilt? You can't do that. You don't _get_ to do that. You do something bad, you make it better. You act."

 

"What would be the point?" she says. "All I could do is say sorry, again and again. Sorry isn't acting. It's after the fact."

 

"Then make it an action. _Do_ sorry, don't just _say_ sorry."

 

"I don't know how," she says eventually. And then she's crying, swallowing back tears that burn through her sinuses and occlude the back of her throat.

 

He moves closer; wraps a hesitant arm around her.

 

"You'll figure it out," he says, gently.

 

\----

They go out for pizza, to a hole-in-the-wall Italian diner two streets away from Helena's apartment. At first it's stilted between them, awkward and mutually-apologetic. They order food in silence; when it arrives, they eat quietly, avoiding eye contact.

 

"Did Claudia say what she was doing today?" she says, reaching for a neutral topic.

 

"She said she had some errands to run," he says. "I thought maybe she was, you know... starting to job-hunt."

 

"Perhaps.”

 

"Do you know what you'll do now?" he asks.

 

"I've yet to really think about it. I suppose I'll have to find some way out of my lease. I can’t afford to stay here without an income."

 

"Will you go back to London?"

 

"It's a possibility. Though I don't know how much there is for me there as things stand."

 

"I'll miss you," he says. "If you go."

 

"Thank you," she says.

 

She pushes her two remaining slices of pizza towards him.

 

"I'm not eating these," she says. "Would you like them?"

 

He smiles.

 

\-----

 

Together they walk the two streets back, Pete's luggage trailing in their wake.

 

"I guess I won't see you for a while," he says, climbing the wooden steps to the apartment two-by-two.

 

"I'll stay in touch," she says. "Let you know how everything goes. And I doubt you'll be rid of Claudia so easily."

 

"We have plans for next Saturday," he says sheepishly. "She's taking me to laser tag."

 

"Of course she is. And of course she will eviscerate you, although I expect you knew that when she asked."

 

"She said she's bringing her own weapon. I don't know if I should believe her."

 

"Never doubt her on matters of technology. I expect she'll have fashioned an appropriate device from a six-volt battery and a light bulb by the weekend."

 

At the top of the stairs, he stops for a moment, looks ahead and then turns around, moving down the steps and back towards Helena.

 

"Aren't you coming in?" she asks, surprised. "I assumed you'd rather wait inside for your taxi."

 

"I think you might be busy," he says, gesturing upwards, backwards.

 

He squeezes her shoulder, once, and walks past her, down the stairs, towards the pavement below.

 

She carries on, up the steps and on to the front of the building, where - she sees - Myka is waiting.


	16. New Lands

So this was what she was telling me, thinks Myka. This is what she's been trying to tell me all along.

 

The knowledge doesn't mitigate any of the anger she feels, any of the sense of betrayal, though she wonders whether it should - only adds extra, nauseating dimensions of shame and embarrassment and culpability.

 

I didn't listen, she thinks. I didn't listen, and now this.

 

\-----

 

"How did this happen?" says Artie, back in his suite. "How did neither of you notice?"

 

"How were we supposed to know?" says Steve. "You don't ask yourself, 'is this person who they say they are?' whenever you meet a new colleague. You take what they say at face value."

 

"You worked with her for weeks," says Artie, "for _weeks_ , and you didn't pick up on anything? Not the tiniest _hint_ that something about her was off? That she didn't, I don't know... have any idea at all what she was doing?"

 

"She was very competent," says Steve. "Talented, even. There wasn't anything to suggest a problem."

 

"I'm concerned," says Artie, dangerously low, "that two of the most senior members of my team could miss this. Could bring an amateur onto an account this size."

 

"She's not an amateur," says Myka, quietly.

 

"She is for our purposes," says Artie. "I put her in HR, for Christ's sake! And even then I was doing her a favor."

 

"She helped us," says Steve. "Wherever she came from, whoever she is - she helped us. We were nowhere on Eagle two weeks ago."

 

"Myka," says Artie, turning away from Steve. "Help me understand. Tell me how you didn't see this."

 

"I wasn't looking for it," she says. "That's the only explanation I can give you. I didn't see it, because I wasn't looking for it. Steve's right - you don't expect people to lie to you. You believe the things they tell you."

 

"That isn't halfway good enough," says Artie. Then: "Unfortunately, we've got bigger things to worry about. If this gets out - if, God forbid, Irene hears about it..."

 

" _If_ it gets out?" says Steve. "How could it not get out? Presumably, if I'd understood this whole situation correctly, there's still a woman named Emily Lake out there somewhere on the payroll. What do you think will happen when she shows up for her first day on the job? _Our_ Emily - what did you say her name was, Helena? She's sat through meetings with half of Planning. Some of the board, too. They're going to notice if we trade her in tomorrow for a different person."

 

"Let me worry about that," says Artie. "She hasn't started yet. Contracts change. People change their minds. It's not an insurmountable problem."

 

"And what about our Emily?" says Steve. "She's just... gone? Just like that?"

 

"Just like that," says Artie. "It's all we can do. Close the door, and hope Irene never finds out."

 

\----

 

Afterwards, Myka remembers almost nothing about the afternoon's workshop. She's aware, when they finish, of Mrs. Frederic approaching them in the lobby afterwards - of a clipped, imperative "Will you be joining me for dinner, Arthur?" that whisks Artie away in a town car before she even really registers that he's gone. And then of Steve taking her hand, pulling her through the revolving doors and out of the hotel.

 

"We're getting a drink," he says. "Food too, maybe. But mostly a drink."

 

\----

 

"She wanted to tell me," says Myka, halfway through their second bottle. "I think she thought she _had_ told me."

 

"She told you?" says Steve, filling their glasses. "What did she tell you? When did she tell you?"

 

"This past weekend, before I left for L.A. She said she'd been lying to me."

 

"But she didn't say what she'd been lying about?"

 

"She tried to. I stopped her. More than once, actually."

 

"That's not like you. Don't you normally like to, you know, have all the facts at your disposal? Knowledge is power, that sort of thing?"

 

"I thought I knew what she was telling me. I sort of... inferred something else. Erroneously, obviously."

 

"So, okay: you knew that she'd lied. She told you that she'd lied. But you thought it was a different lie than the actual - and by the way, really pretty spectacular - lie it turned out to be?"

 

"Pretty much. And yes, I do realize how idiotic that was."

 

"I didn't say that. I am wondering, though: what did you think she was lying about?"

 

"Can we say 'something else' and leave it at that?"

 

"If that's what you want, sure. Do you know what you're going to do?"

 

"Do?"

 

"About Emily. Helena."

 

"I wasn't going to do anything. It's over. She's gone. I just need to..."

 

"Close the door?"

 

"Get over it. Try not to dwell on things."

 

"You don't want to see her again?"

 

"I don't even know who she is."

 

"You really think that?"

 

"I didn't know her real name 4 hours ago. How am I supposed to know what was true and what wasn't?"

 

"You have to trust your own judgment."

 

"I think we've demonstrated that my judgment in this area is fatally impaired."

 

"Review the evidence, then. Work it out logically. What did she say to you, when she made her big confession?"

 

"You really think this will help?"

 

"I don't think it'll hurt."

 

"She said that it was separate. That what she'd been doing at work had no bearing on what was happening between us."

 

"Did you believe her? At the time, anyway?"

 

"Yes. Though I can’t tell you why."

 

"Then you need to trust that, at least."

 

"It still doesn't make any sense to me, what she did. I don't understand it."

 

"Neither do I. But I don't think the two of us sitting here trying to puzzle it out will get us any closer to an answer. Not one that will satisfy you, anyway."

 

"You think I should talk to her. Ask her."

 

"It's the only way you'll get what you want from her. Even if all you want is closure."

 

"There's no way she's still in Austin, not after earlier."

 

"Then go see her tomorrow."

 

"She might not have even gone back to the city. She could be on a flight to London by now."

 

"You won't know until you look, will you?"

 

She picks up her glass; knocks back the wine in two swallows.

 

"And in the meantime?" she says.

 

"In the meantime," he says, refilling the glass again, "we do this. And you tell me what exactly it was that you were doing in L.A."

 

\----

 

At the departures gate the following day, her head pounding, Myka checks her email and prays for crisis - some professional difficulty so great, so cataclysmic that it demands her return to the office that very afternoon, away from Emily ( _Helena_ , she tells herself, _Helena_ ), away from questions, answers, explanations. No crisis comes.

 

"Can you get online?" says Steve from the sling chair next to her, laptop balanced precariously on his knees.

 

"I'm on now," she says.

 

"Must be me, then. I’m getting nothing."

 

He looks up, looks around.

 

"Feels like half the company's on this flight," he says.

 

"Makes sense. There was an open bar at the hotel last night. I don't think anyone was clamoring to catch the red-eye back."

 

"Isn't that the guy from yesterday, by the soda machine? The one from the elevator?"

 

"His name is Pete. We've been deliberately avoiding each other since he got here."

 

"He doesn't look happy."

 

"If Artie's seen him since then, he probably isn't."

 

"Where is Artie, anyway? I thought he was booked to come back with us."

 

"He's staying an extra night. Something about another dinner with Mrs. Frederic."

 

"You can call her Irene, you know. She can't hear you from here."

 

"Irene, then."

 

"That's good news, actually, that they're having dinner again. Maybe they'll find a way to kiss and make up."

 

"Anything's possible," she says.

 

He presses the keypad rapidly.

 

"Got it," he says eventually.

 

"You're on?"

 

"Yeah. Signal's not great, but it should be enough to... Holy shit."

 

"What?" she says.

 

He stares at the screen for 30 seconds, a minute.

 

"Is something wrong?"' she says, concerned.

 

"I wouldn't say wrong," he says. "Unexpected, maybe."

 

He turns the screen to face her.

 

"This is from her?" she says, taking in the model. "From Helena?"

 

"Yeah."

 

"Was there a message? Any context?"

 

"Just what she's written here: _I'm_ _sorry - H_. Guess she's more of a woman of action."

 

She studies the design - the wings, the gears, the pedals, the suggestion of copper and cloth.

 

"It's good, right?" he says.

 

"Yes," she says. "It's good."

 

\----

 

They land a little after 2.

 

"Are you going straight to her place?" asks Steve as they negotiate Arrivals.

 

"I guess so," she says.

 

"Don't overthink it," he says. "And let her do the talking. She owes you that."

 

A flash of card and bright-red ink catches her eye in the mass of waiting bodies.

 

"Is that you?" she says. "Is that your name?"

 

They push forward through the crowd. Closer, in the hands of a burly, bullet-headed man she doesn't recognize, the sign clearly reads: _Steve Jinks (Warehouse)_.

 

"I didn't order a car," says Steve.

 

"I didn't bring you one," says the burly man.

 

"It's okay, Lyle," says Claudia, appearing out of nowhere by the man's side. "I can take it from here."

 

The man hands her the sign, hugs her and vanishes into the crowd.

 

"What is this?" says Steve.

 

"I needed to talk to you," Claudia says. "And I wasn't sure you'd stop, if you saw it was me."

 

"Claudia," says Myka, "I'm sorry, but we can't help you get your placement back. It was Artie's decision."

 

"Not important," says Claudia, dismissively. "It's you," she says to Steve. "I need you."

 

"About what?" he says.

 

"I can't really say. Not here."

 

"We've had a long couple of days, okay?" he says. "I can't deal with cryptic right now. Whatever you have to say, say it."

 

"It's personal," she says, holding his gaze. "Private."

 

"You know what?" says Myka. "I have to leave anyway. I'm gonna go get a cab. Claudia - always a pleasure. I'll see you Monday, okay?" she adds to Steve.

 

"Sure," he says, puzzled. "And good luck."

 

"Thanks," she says.

 

As she moves away from them, towards the exit, she sees Claudia lean in closer to Steve, the gesture unexpectedly intimate.

 

"Alone at last," she hears her say.

 

\----

 

The cab drops her a block away from her destination, at a coffee shop. She spends 90 minutes sipping at a latte, working up her courage; walks the rest of the way up the hill, up the wooden steps to the apartment. She's half disappointed, half relieved to find when she gets there that Emily - Helena - isn't home.

 

She sits down on a smooth round stone a few steps from the door, in the shade of a towering fern; waits five minutes, ten, thinking not very much of anything. Eventually she stands, prepares to leave, and almost collides with an older woman in a plum kimono.

 

"I'm so sorry," she says. "I didn't see you. I think I was... somewhere else."

 

"Never apologize for daydreaming, dear," says the woman.

 

Myka smiles, politely.

 

"Have you come far?" says the woman, indicating Myka's suitcase.

 

"Just from Texas."

 

"Well, that's far. Conceptually at least."

 

The woman adjusts her turban.

 

"Are you waiting for someone?" she asks.

 

"I don't know," says Myka honestly. "Maybe."

 

"Let me guess," says the woman. "That lovely English girl. Helena."

 

"Yes," says Myka.

 

"I believe she stepped out with a young man. Almost an hour ago now."

 

"Oh."

 

"Would you like to stay here until she comes back? Keep an old lady company?"

 

"Will they be long, do you think?"

 

"I heard the young man said something about pizza as they were leaving, so I'd imagine not. Stay where you are a while. Rest."

 

"Do you live here?" Myka asks, after a pause.

 

"I'm just next door," she says, indicating a shingled three-storey to the right of Helena's building. "I pop by from time to time to help Mr. Belafonte with the azaleas. The man has no feel for compost."

 

She lifts the small pruning shears in her hand meaningfully.

 

"They're beautiful," says Myka, nodding towards the plants.

 

"You should see my Beatrice," says the woman. "She's almost overtaken the patio."

 

She examines Myka critically.

 

"You don't seem happy," she says.

 

"I'm not," says Myka, surprising herself.

 

"Because of our English friend?"

 

"Yes." She looks back at the woman. "Why am I telling you this?"

 

"I couldn't say. But I can listen while I garden, if you'd like."

 

"She isn't who she says she is," says Myka eventually, as the woman tends to the foliage.

 

"No-one ever is, dear," says the woman. "It's not such a crime."

 

"She lied to me."

 

"Perhaps she felt she had to. Some lies are necessary, aren't they?"

 

"Not this one."

 

"But you're here. Waiting for her."

 

"I'm not sure that I should be."

 

"Of course you are. You've been here a half hour."

 

"Alright. Then I'm not sure what'll happen when _she's_ here."

 

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore."

 

"I'm sorry?"

 

"It's a risk, but you must take it."

 

"You can't say that. You don't know anything about me."

 

"You'll have to forgive me my assumptions, then. It's only... you have the look of someone who left the shore behind a while ago."

 

She cocks her head to the side, listening for something.

 

"And now," she says, "if I'm not mistaken, a new land is upon us."

 

"What do you mean?" says Myka.

 

And then Emily - Helena - is there, right in front of her, at the top of the steps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit of an exercise in intertextual self-indulgence - sorry about that. I now pretty much just want them to all go and live in Barbary Lane, circa 1976.


	17. Tea

"Can I get you something?" says Helena, gravitating back towards the kitchen. "Coffee? Tea?"

 

"I thought you didn't drink tea?" says Myka.

 

"I don't."

 

"But you _have_ tea."

 

"For guests."

 

"Guests. Right."

 

And just like that, Helena thinks, it's ceased to be easy between them. Whatever _it_ is, it's more brittle now, more barbed - stretched thinner, tighter, close to breaking.

 

"I really don't like tea," she says, pulling cups from an overhead shelf. "It wasn't an invention."

 

"How am I supposed to know that? I don't know what you like. I don't know anything."

 

"It's the taste," says Helena after a moment. "Too metallic."

 

"Not with lemon," says Myka automatically. “Or milk and sugar.”

 

"Then what would be the point in drinking tea? Better to go straight to something that I know I can enjoy unadulterated."

 

For the second time that afternoon she reaches for the kettle, fills it with water.

 

"I can't do this," says Myka.

 

"Do what?"

 

"This... back-and-forth. About tea, or chocolate, or whatever other commodity you want to settle on. What you did - it matters. We can't just... reset."

 

"I realise that," says Helena. "I'm sorry if I in any way gave the impression that I thought otherwise."

 

"You lied to me," says Myka.

 

"Yes."

 

"Over and over and over."

 

"Yes."

 

"It's indefensible."

 

"I know. I won't try to defend it."

 

Myka moves to the edge of the bed; sits down and leans forward, elbows resting on the tops of her legs, her posture a mirror of Pete's.

 

"It means something, that you tried to tell me before," she says.

 

"It does?" says Helena.

 

"Yeah. I'd rather be told than, you know... find out some other way."

 

Helena flashes back to the elevator - to Artie, and Steve, and the growing horror on Myka's face. She flushes; closes her eyes against the cold, splintering shame of it.

 

"I should have been clearer in my explanation," she says. "There shouldn't have been room for ambiguity."

 

"I think I heard what I wanted to hear," says Myka ruefully. "Or... maybe not what I _wanted_ to hear, exactly. But what I was expecting to hear."

 

"Oh?"

 

"It's not important."

 

The kettle boils. She spoons coffee into the cups; pours the water onto the coffee, leavens Myka's with milk, sugar.

 

"Coffee," she says.

 

She hands Myka the cup, doing all she can to avoid physical contact. Their fingers touch, despite her efforts; she suppresses the urge to apologise.

 

"I need to know why," says Myka. "I need you to tell me, so I get it. So that it makes some sort of sense.”

 

Helena sits down beside her on the bed - keeping just enough distance, she hopes, that the movement seems natural rather than deliberately intrusive.

 

"I don't know that I can," she says.

 

"That isn't good enough."

 

"I understand that. But I don't have an explanation."

 

"You don't _know_ why you did it?"

 

"In the first place? No. It was... I suppose a misunderstanding, and I went along with it. Perhaps the better question is why I _kept_ doing it."

 

"And what's the answer?"

 

_I_ _don't have one_ , Helena thinks. _I_ _seem to have shed all capacity for self-reflection since I set this enterprise in motion_. But Myka is looking at her, waiting for something, anything, so she responds anyway, the words dredged from somewhere beyond her immediate consciousness, and as she speaks, the answer reveals itself to her, raw and discomfiting.

 

"I wanted to get away," she says. "From myself. From the mess I'd made of things, before I got here. It's all been quite... humiliating. I was grateful to Artie for the job, of course - but there was no dignity in it. I'm sorry to say, I felt I deserved better. And Emily Lake... she _was_ better."

 

"I can't even begin to understand that," says Myka. "I looked you up, yesterday. The things you've done - you're remarkable. _You're_ better than... whoever you've been pretending to be."

 

"Not here. Not now. But thank you."

 

Myka shrugs.

 

"I'd wanted to tell you," says Helena. "From almost the beginning."

 

"And I kept telling you not to," says Myka. "Whenever you tried, right?"

 

"You couldn't have known. I couldn’t believe when it seemed as if you _did_ know. And in any case, beyond what was happening between us - I _wanted_ to keep going. I liked the Janus work. I liked... helping. Feeling useful."

 

She feels the mattress fold and sag, and then Myka is facing her, closer than before, torso turned towards Helena's.

 

"Steve showed me the design you sent him," she says. "You didn't have to do that."

 

" _Was_ it useful?"

 

"It was perfect. Exactly what we needed."

 

"I'm glad, then."

 

"We're going to take it into development. I've asked Steve to talk to the engineers Monday."

 

"That's wonderful," says Helena.

 

"Don't look so goddamn _meek_ , okay?" says Myka, angry now but edging closer again, grasping roughly (more roughly than before) for Helena's hand. "You knew it was good. You wouldn't have sent it otherwise. And that note! All that fake humility, Jesus! You're better than that, too, so stop being such a fucking drama queen."

 

"Alright," says Helena, looking down at their hands, feeling the harsher grip around her wrist, her fingers. "Alright."

 

"And _this_ ," says Myka, more quietly, pointing down to their hands, their bodies, the space between them. "I have no idea what this is. I don't know you."

 

"That's not true," says Helena.

 

"I can barely remember your name. I keep needing to stop myself from calling you Emily."

 

"Nothing else has changed. I can promise you that, at least. Who I am, how I feel - they're the same. The form was the deception, not the content."

 

"I don't know how you feel. That's the point. I haven't been reading anything right, this whole time."

 

"And that also is my fault. I've been giving you the wrong page to read from."

 

"Give me the right one, then. Be honest with me."

 

Helena feels cornered, suddenly.

 

"I've... enjoyed spending time with you," she says. “A great deal.”

 

Myka laughs.

 

"That was understated," she says, the anger and intensity falling away as she speaks.

 

"Were you expecting a grander declaration?"

 

"Can you blame me? They're kind of your stock-in-trade."

 

"We've known each other barely three weeks. Spent a handful of nights together."

 

"It felt like the beginning of something," says Myka. "For me, anyway."

 

"And for me," says Helena quickly. "But I've derailed things. I'm very aware of that."

 

Myka squeezes her hand, more softly.

 

"Maybe not completely," she says. She takes a deep breath. "Maybe this is a new land, after all."

 

"A new land?" says Helena, confused.

 

Myka pulls her to her feet; rests her forehead against Helena’s.

 

"Looks like the shore’s long gone, anyway," she says, as much to herself as to Helena. "So, why don't you tell me who you are, and we can go from there?"

 

\----

 

Much, much later, with the heavy curtains drawn and Helena folded, half-asleep, into the crook of her arm, Myka asks, "What are you going to do now? What are your plans?"

 

"You're not the first person to ask me that today."

 

"And?"

 

"And I have none. No plans at all to speak of. Though sleep is looking extremely attractive in the immediate term."

 

She burrows deeper into Myka's side, her eyes still closed.

 

"You have to have a plan," says Myka.

 

"Perhaps I could formulate one tomorrow?"

 

"I'm serious. You need to know what you're going to do now. _I_ need to know what you're going to do now. Will you even stay in the city?"

 

Helena pushes herself up, onto her elbow; lays a reassuring hand on Myka's stomach.

 

"I'll work something out," she says. "There are stronger and stronger incentives to stay."

 

"I'm not trying to push," says Myka.

 

"I know. And I'm not trying to avoid the question."

 

She moves her hand lower; presses kisses to Myka's shoulder, neck, triceps.

 

"I can talk to Artie," Myka says.

 

Her hand stills.

 

"Please don't," she says.

 

"I have to show him the new design you sent us - he's asked to see where we're up to, ahead of Monday. I was going to mail it across to him today, but... other things came up, obviously."

 

"You don't have to say that it's mine."

 

"I should tell him Steve drew it?"

 

"Why not Claudia? She's more than capable. And it might lead him to rethink his position on her placement."

 

"It's _your_ work. And like I said, it's good. He's an asshole sometimes, I can see that, but he knows good. He _likes_ good."

 

"I would really rather you didn't try to... plead my case for me. Tell him I did it, if you must, but please don't ask him to take me back."

 

"Okay. Okay."

 

She places her own hand over Helena's; bows her body upwards, encouragingly.

 

Helena takes the hint; presses lower, harder.

 

"What about freelancing?" says Myka.

 

"What?"

 

"Couldn't you pick up freelance work from somewhere? Your name, it's got to be worth something, still, whatever you did back home."

 

"Are you _quite_ sure you want to talk about this now?"

 

"You're right. I'll stop."

 

Helena pauses; slows.

 

"I tried," she says. "When I first got here. Sent out dozens of emails; visited scores of offices. I realise I'm opening myself up to further accusations of melodrama when I say this, but my name is something of a poisoned chalice, even this far from London."

 

Myka pulls her closer.

 

"I'm sorry," she says. "You know what it sounds like, though?"

 

"What?"

 

"Like you need a partner. Someone to bring you the clients. Someone without your... baggage."

 

"Was that an offer?"

 

"I'm happy where I am, thanks."

 

"Shame. I see it now... Wells and Bering: You Think It, We Make It."

 

"Surely we'd think it, too?"

 

"I don't know. If recent events have demonstrated anything, it's that I'm less inclined to thought than action."

 

"I guess so," says Myka, quietly.

 

"Shit. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to... ruin this."

 

"You didn't. It's just... it'll take a while. To understand it all. Get it straight in my head."

 

"I know. I'm sorry."

 

They lay together in silence, neither moving.

 

"Maybe I could do with thinking a little less myself," says Myka eventually.

 

She draws Helena's hand back towards her, across her belly and down, light pressure on the knuckles.

 

"I'm sorry?" says Helena.

 

"Stop apologising."

 

\----

 

Later still, when Helena is asleep, Myka slips out of bed; retrieves her phone from her bag, checks her email.

 

Scrolling back through her inbox, she finds the message from Steve, Helena's model attached. She forwards it to Artie as is: no note, no commentary, no plea for him to reconsider.

 

The design, she thinks, will speak for itself.

 

 


	18. Luggage

When Myka leaves her luggage at Helena's early Monday morning, it feels like a commitment, a promise that surprises her even as she makes it. Helena is asleep when she leaves, and this too feels weighted, domestic – a signifier of some unvoiced transition in Myka's status, from houseguest to something else, something more.

 

She sloughs off the thought on her walk to the office; focuses instead on Artie, Mrs. Frederic, the week ahead. She's had, she realizes, no emails since Saturday: no acknowledgement from Artie of the updated design, no allusion to a game-plan for the meeting with the Austin team, not even a _how's it going_ _?_ from Steve. It's the most inactive her inbox has been over a weekend in months, and it's unsettling.

 

(She should, she knows, be equally unsettled by Helena, by the prospect of the something more - she wants to be unsettled, to be anxious, hesitant. Instead she's calmed, quietened at even the idea of her, at the memory of soft laughter and hard consonants and a hand, late at night, in the small of her back, and she wonders - less idly than she ought to - about this other kind of stillness that extends beyond bodies and space, and what it means, if it means anything).

 

She's at the office by 8, at her desk by 8.15. At 8.20, Steve walks past her door.

 

"Guess I don't need to ask how it went Saturday," he says when she stops him in the corridor. "I _know_ that's not your shirt."

 

"I only had what I packed for L.A.," she says. "We had to improvise."

 

"There's a we now? Definitely?"

 

"I think so. I hope so."

 

"So, what? All is forgiven?"

 

"Not yet. Heading there, maybe.”

 

"Did she tell you why she did it?"

 

"She did."

 

"But you'd rather not go into it?"

 

"If you don't mind? It's just... complicated. Too complicated for a Monday morning. Especially _this_ Monday morning."

 

"That I understand. What time are we on?"

 

"9, I think."

 

"Boardroom?"

 

"Says so in my calendar."

 

"Makes sense, if we've got company. I should probably go prep for it. Catch up on what the Austin guys have been doing, or something."

 

"Wait," she says, remembering. "What happened with Claudia?"

 

"With Claudia?" he says.

 

"At the airport. All that cloak-and-dagger stuff, what was that about?"

 

He looks edgy, she thinks; hunted.

 

"Nothing," he says. "Nothing to worry about, anyway."

 

"You're a terrible liar, you know."

 

"Then can we just say that _I'd_ rather not go into it?"

 

"Too complicated for a Monday morning?"

 

"It really is."

 

"Maybe later we can trade."

 

"Sure," he says. "Maybe later."

 

\----

 

The boardroom is packed. At the head of the table sits Mrs. Frederic, imperious as Athena in pearls and knitwear, and Artie beside her, smiling, tie tighter than ever around his neck.

 

He stands when he speaks; makes introductions, light-touch jokes eliciting volleys of polite laughter. He outlines the overall purpose of the meeting ("knowledge share," "best practice," "fostering collaboration" and what feel to Myka like an army of empty phonemes); hints at a desire to introduce new ways of thinking, new ways of working. Ways to innovate; to disrupt.

 

Then he dims the lights.

 

“Where is he going with this?” whispers Steve to Myka, visibly tense.

 

“I have no idea,” she says. “None at all.”

 

\----

 

Helena sleeps in.

 

Around 9.30, she wakes; showers, makes coffee (with neither milk nor sugar). She consciously avoids thinking about work, and especially about Warehouse. In the spirit of denial, she also avoids looking at her desk – where, she knows, Myka has left the contact details of a Bay Area headhunter with an interest in ergonomics.

 

She’s contemplating breakfast when she hears footsteps on the stairs; is pleased, then perturbed to see that it’s Myka at the door, flushed and breathless.

 

“Did you run here?” she asks.

 

“ _That’s_ your question?” says Myka, catching her breath, making her way to the edge of the bed. “Also, you really need to get a couch.”

 

She hands Myka a bottle of water from the fridge; brushes the slightly damp hair back from her face.

 

“Let me rephrase, then,” she says. “Has something happened?”

 

“You could say that,” says Myka, holding the water to her forehead. “Artie’s taken your design.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“What I said: he’s taken your design, for Janus. He’s using it.”

 

“Wasn’t that precisely what you were hoping he’d do when you showed it to him?”

 

“Not like this.”

 

“You may have to elaborate.”

 

“I sent him the model over the weekend.”

 

“I’d assumed you did.”

 

“And he liked it.”

 

“As you hoped he would. And yet I’m sensing that this was a problem.”

 

“He took the credit. Passed it off as his.”

 

“It belongs to Warehouse – he can do with it as he pleases.”

 

“Even tell people he designed it?”

 

She pauses; considers the implications.

 

“He did that?” she says, slowly.

 

“Yeah,” says Myka. “That and more. I guess he wanted to seem… I don’t know, hands-on in front of the board. Said he’d spent all month on it. With ‘support’ from me and Steve,” she adds bitterly.

 

“That’s… misleading.”

 

“The word you’re looking for is duplicitous. And what he’s planning… it’s really bad for the company. Bad for all of us.”

 

“He’s planning something? Something to do with the design?”

 

“He’s using it as a springboard. He wants to launch another division of the business, a product innovation lab. And he wants to head it up.”

 

“That’s ludicrous. You don’t have the capacity to do that in-house. He certainly isn’t equipped to lead that kind of activity.”

 

“I know. And he does, too. But he’s trying to make a break from Mrs. Frederic, to claim something that’s just his. It’s another power move.”

 

“Then it’s doomed to failure. You could recruit people, of course – but it would take time. I can think of only a handful of men and women on the West Coast who’d be capable of leading an operation on the scale he must have in mind.”

 

“You’re exceptional. I get it.”

 

“That wasn’t what I meant. It’s just a… very specialised endeavour.”

 

“It’s a disaster, for us anyway. He has no idea what he’s doing.”

 

“I’d have to agree. But, and I don’t mean this unkindly: why are you here? Obviously I’m delighted to see you, drenched in sweat or otherwise, but now seems quite an infelicitous time for you to have stepped away from the office.”

 

“I might have… walked out of the meeting.”

 

“With the board? And Mrs. Frederic?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Perhaps I should have given you something stronger than water.”

 

“I’m fine. I just… it wasn’t right. I couldn’t just sit there. What Artie’s done, the way he’s handled things – it’s idiotic. And unethical. He’s not the guy I thought he was.”

 

“So you left. And ran here.”

 

“It wasn’t a run. More of a steep climb, quickly.”

 

“Nevertheless, I’m glad you felt you could come.”

 

“Me too, actually. Though… how can I put this? I’m not here to see you. To spend time with you.”

 

“No?”

 

“No. I was hoping you’d help me.”

 

“Of course, if I can. Help you how?”

 

“To stop this. Stop what Artie’s trying to do. I don’t know how, exactly. I thought we might be able to come up with a strategy on the way. We’ve got a half hour, if we walk.”

 

“To Warehouse?”

 

“To see Mrs. Frederic.”

 

\----

 

“Are you sure this is sensible?” says Helena, eyeing the doorman nervously. “I seem to remember Artie promising to have me arrested if I ever came back here.”

 

Myka pushes through the glass of the revolving doors, delivering them both into the foyer.

 

“Will you stop worrying?” says Myka. “It was just a threat; he won’t follow through on it, even if he sees you. Besides – I’m pretty sure he’d have to go through Liam and the Security team, and I think Steve might have something to say if his boyfriend had my person thrown in jail.”

 

“I’m your person?”

 

“I don’t know. That was really more of a slip than a declaration.”

 

“Perhaps there’s a conversation to be had there.”

 

“Maybe later? When there’s less of a chance that my boss might call the cops on you?”

 

“You were certain a moment ago that that wasn’t a possibility.”

 

“It isn’t. But still… later?”

 

They walk towards the elevators.

 

“Isn’t that Claudia?” says Myka. “Over there, by the water fountain?”

 

Helena turns; sees Claudia, her mid-section eclipsed by laptop cases and a power cable looped around her neck, and Pete beside her, a brown paper bag in his hand.

 

“There is literally no-one else it could be,” says Helena.

 

Pete spots them. He flaps a hand at Helena, an unreadable gesture that might be _go away_ but might equally be _come over here, now_ – then gives up and races towards them, Claudia following at a more relaxed pace.

 

“You’re not supposed to be here!” he says, eyes wide. “Seriously, H.G.! I know you’re all renegade and rule break-y, but something very, very not good’s gonna happen if Artie sees you.”

 

“I’ve been assured,” says Helena with a glance to Myka, “that I won’t be arrested and hauled into a jail cell. So you needn’t worry.”

 

“Should _you_ be here?” says Myka to Claudia.

 

“Just picking up some of my stuff,” says Claudia. “And bringing Pete an early lunch.”

 

“Rainbow bagels,” says Pete. “With cream cheese and sprinkles.”

 

“From McGinty’s,” says Claudia.

 

“I think one of your bagels may be leaking,” says Helena to Pete, gesturing to the paper bag.

 

“So what’s the plan?” says Claudia to Helena.

 

“What makes you think I have a plan?” says Helena.

 

“You’re here, with _her_ ,” says Claudia. “You totally have a plan.”

 

“She’s really not so great with plans,” says Myka to Claudia.

 

“Are you two… you know?” says Pete, looking from Helena to Myka. “Is it all good?”

 

“Apparently there’s going to be a conversation,” says Myka, smiling at Helena. “But provisionally yes.”

 

“Yes?” says Helena.

 

“Provisionally. Subject to discussion.”

 

“Awesome,” says Pete, bagel halfway to his mouth.

 

“None of this is making me think you don’t have a plan,” says Claudia.

 

“I wouldn’t say ‘plan,’” says Helena, “so much as ‘loose-limbed arrangement of desperate hopes.’”

 

“Works for me,” says Claudia.

 

“We should probably go up,” says Myka to Helena.

 

“To see Jinksy?” says Claudia. “Mrs. Frederic, maybe?”

 

“Just the latter for now,” says Helena.

 

“Then I wouldn’t bother calling that elevator,” says Claudia. “They’re right behind you, both of them. Artie too.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're heading rapidly away plot-wise from The Secret Of My Success, towards the last act of Working Girl. 
> 
> (Throw in a couple of pairs of identical twins, and it could have been a Big Business AU. Maybe next time...)


	19. Paper

Helena turns, cautiously, and there - true to Claudia's word - is Mrs. Frederic, flanked by Steve and Artie.

 

"Ms. Bering," says Mrs. Frederic to Myka. "Nice to see you again. Will you be staying with us this time?"

 

"I'm sorry about earlier," says Myka. "I shouldn't have left like that."

 

"We'll talk about it upstairs," says Artie, teeth gritted. "The three of us, and Mr. Jinks."

 

"You can't think of anyone else you might want to come along?" says Myka sharply, edging closer to Helena. "Anyone at all?"

 

"I don't believe we've been introduced," says Mrs. Frederic to Helena.

 

"Helena Wells," says Helena, reaching out a hand. Mrs. Frederic grasps it firmly; holds Helena's gaze steadily, quizzically.

 

"Helena Wells," she says. "Didn't you used to be with Pemrose? At their London office?"

 

"I did," says Helena.

 

"And you patented that device, you and your team. Something to do with rock climbing?"

 

"The Grappler," says Claudia.

 

"And you are?" says Mrs. Frederic.

 

"Delivery girl," says Claudia quickly. "Just, you know... bringing the bagels."

 

Pete holds up his paper bag.

 

"Bagels," he says.

 

"That I bought", says Claudia.

 

"You and I are going to have words, Mr. Lattimer," says Artie, his eyes on Claudia.

 

"You've been working here?" says Mrs. Frederic to Helena, ignoring the others. "At Warehouse?"

 

"Yes," says Myka. "She has."

 

"Unofficially," adds Helena.

 

"You didn't mention you'd been recruiting," says Mrs. Frederic to Artie. "Unofficially or otherwise."

 

"I haven't been," says Artie. "She's my niece. She absolutely does not work here."

 

"She designed the Janus model," says Myka.

 

"Arthur?" says Mrs. Frederic.

 

"Of course she didn't," says Artie dismissively. "She's had no input into the project. She shouldn't even be here."

 

"Ms. Bering?" says Mrs. Frederic.

 

"It's her work," says Myka, slipping her hand into Helena's. "She put it together for me and Steve. He," she gestures to Artie, "had nothing to do with it."

 

"I think we all understand your real motivation here, Myka," says Artie, looking down at their hands.

 

"What is it you said about you and that girl from Payroll?" says Myka to Artie. "Love is love, but business is business."

 

"Love?" says Helena.

 

"Told you," says Claudia to Pete.

 

"Be careful, Miss Donovan," says Mrs. Frederic. "Or I may start to wonder why it is that one of our most promising interns is engaged in the delivery of baked goods on what I can only assume is Warehouse time."

 

"See?" says Pete to Claudia, just loudly enough for Helena to hear. "You can't lie to her. She knows _everything_."

 

"Ms. Wells," says Mrs. Frederic. "Might you be able to clarify this situation for me?"

 

Helena takes a deep, steadying breath; looks anywhere but at Artie.

 

"Myka's right," says Helena. "It is my design."

 

"Bullshit," says Artie. "Look, Irene - I didn't want to say anything before, because honestly I was a little embarrassed, but she _did_ used to work here, okay? I took her on because she's family, and I felt sorry for her, but I had to let her go last week when I found out she'd been... I don't even know how to explain it. It was identity theft, basically. She's lucky I didn't get the cops involved. But you can't trust her. She's a liar - it's what she does."

 

"Is this true, Ms. Wells?" says Mrs. Frederic.

 

"Yes," says Helena. "It wish it weren't, but I'm afraid it is."

 

"But it's not the whole picture," says Myka. "And that's still her work, not his."

 

"For Christ's sake, Myka," says Artie. "Irene, you see what this is, right? It's payback, for firing her girlfriend."

 

"It's the truth," says Myka to Mrs. Frederic. "He didn't know the design existed until I sent it to him Saturday."

 

Mrs. Frederic stands very still, eyes flicking from Artie to Myka and back again.

 

She's sizing us up, thinks Helena.

 

"This is quite the impasse," she says eventually. "Ms. Wells, a question."

 

"Yes?" says Helena.

 

Mrs. Frederic opens her bag, a brown leather briefcase at odds with the stitched pastels of her suit. From it she retrieves a piece of paper, typeface visible on one side. She hands it to Helena.

 

"Does this mean anything to you?" she asks.

 

Helena scans the printout.

 

"I'm really not sure," says Helena. "I certainly didn't write it."

 

"I'm given to understand," said Mrs. Frederic, "that it's the latest entry in an online journal detailing some of the goings-on here at the San Francisco office. A blog." She draws out the word slowly, carefully enunciating the alien juxtaposition of syllables. "It was sent to my assistant on Sunday morning, from an Irene Frederic - I assume to encourage her to open it. I picked it up late last night."

 

"What does it say?" says Myka.

 

Helena passes her the paper wordlessly.

 

"'There's a new woman in town at Depot," Myka reads, "'and she's getting right up the nose of fearless, full-necked leader Andy Nelson. Fresh from making waves across the pond, our new girl - let's call her H.G. - looks set to revive Depot's fortunes with her prodigious talent. She's already put her flair for pen and power tools to good use, single-handedly saving this writer's bacon on a hard-to-handle brief. Who knows what else she'll accomplish, if our boy Andy can keep the green-eyed monster at bay long enough to let her?'"

 

She stops reading; folds the paper in half and hands it back to Mrs. Frederic.

 

"Did you do this?" she asks Helena.

 

"Absolutely not," says Helena.

 

"Pseudonyms aside," says Mrs. Frederic, "it does seem to support your story, Ms. Bering - and yours, Ms. Wells. Wouldn't you say, Arthur?"

 

"This is insane," says Artie, face growing redder by the moment. "How long have we worked together, Irene? You're gonna take the word of some... poison-pen writer over mine? Some gossip columnist?"

 

"I don't know, Andy," says Claudia. "The evidence is mounting."

 

"You," says Artie, rounding on Claudia. "You did this, didn't you? You wrote it."

 

"Nope," says Claudia. "Sorry, big guy. Wasn't me. I'm really not much of a writer."

 

"Then it had to have been one of you two," he says, pointing to Myka, then Helena. "There's nobody else it could have been. I swear to God, Myka, you will pay for this."

 

"It wasn't her," says Steve quietly.

 

"I'm sorry, Mr. Jinks?" says Mrs. Frederic.

 

"It wasn't her who wrote it," says Steve, more loudly. "It was me. And it's true, all of it. It's Helena's design."

 

"It was you?" says Myka.

 

"Yeah," he says.

 

"I can't say I'm overjoyed with your method of delivery," says Mrs. Frederic to Steve, placing the folder paper back in her briefcase. "But I do appreciate your honesty. It was your project Ms. Wells worked on?"

 

"It was," he says. "Mine and Myka's. And she did an incredible job."

 

"Then it seems that it's you and I who need to have the conversation, Arthur," says Mrs. Frederic to Artie. "As a matter of urgency, I'd say."

 

"I don't need to stand here and take this," says Artie. "Not even from you, Irene."

 

"Then if I were you," says Mrs. Frederic, coolly, "I would take the elevator upstairs and have a long, hard look at that ostentatious office of yours. Because I'm here to stay now, Arthur. And it looks to me as if you may not be."

 

"You can't fire me," says Artie. "I'll go to the board."

 

"My board, Arthur. My company. My rules."

 

He opens his mouth to speak - then, seeing the look on Mrs. Frederic's face, thinks better of it. Instead he stalks away towards the exit; through the glass doors, onto the street.

 

Claudia sidles over to Steve; pats him gently on the arm.

 

"Well played, Jinksy," Helena hears her say. "That was some nice work. And now, what's the saying? Your debt to me is paid."

 

"Ms. Bering," says Mrs. Frederic to Myka. "Apparently we also have a lot to discuss. Might I ask you to temporarily separate yourself from Ms. Wells and join me for lunch?"

 

Helena looks down; sees her hand still in Myka's.

 

"Yes, ma'am," says Myka. "In just one minute?"

 

Mrs. Frederic nods, knowingly.

 

"I'll be in my car out front," she says. "Mr. Jinks, would you care to walk me out?"

 

"Yes, ma'am," says Steve.

 

When they've gone, Myka turns to face her.

 

"You've been an idiot," she says.

 

"Yes," says Helena. "I'd say that's a fair summation."

 

"If you lie to me again, about anything... I'll find out. And there'll be consequences."

 

"As there absolutely should be," Helena agrees vigorously.

 

"And, whatever happens here today, or afterwards - business is still business."

 

"Of course," says Helena.

 

"But that other thing I said..."

 

"Other thing?"

 

"I thought we agreed that playing dumb doesn't suit you?"

 

"Alright, fine. That other thing."

 

"That wasn't entirely untrue either. Business is business, but that other thing is... that other thing."

 

"That other thing which we apparently aren't speaking aloud?"

 

"That's the one."

 

Helena steps in closer.

 

"We still need to have our discussion," she says.

 

"We do," says Myka, and kisses her. She closes her eyes, leans into the kiss - and hears Pete and Claudia wolf-whistling behind them. Myka pulls away; smiles.

 

"I should go," she says. "Leave you to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern over there."

 

"Hey," says Claudia.

 

"Who?" says Pete.

 

"I'll see you later?" says Myka.

 

"I would hope so," says Helena.

 

"What's the plan?" says Claudia, as Myka leaves.

 

"There is, as ever, no plan," says Helena.

 

"You have to have a plan."

 

"So I've been told."

 

"If you don't have one... we should make one."

 

"Over lunch?" says Pete.

 

"Sure. Why not?"

 

"Don't you both have other things to be getting on with?" says Helena.

 

"Not me," says Pete.

 

"And I'm unemployed," says Claudia. "I think, anyway."

 

"So," says Pete. "McGinty's?"

 

"They're doing All-Day Breakfast," says Claudia. "You can't say no to that."

 

She looks at them both - at this new, strange almost-family she's inadvertently assembled.

 

"No," she says. "I suppose I can't."

 


	20. Epilogue

_Three_ _months later._

 

Helena is late.

 

She bursts through the doors like a hurricane, spilling breathless apologies. 

 

Claudia barely looks up from her screen.

 

"You know," she says, "being the boss means never having to say you're sorry."

 

"I was held up," says Helena, laying her bag on her desk and sliding down into her chair. "There was traffic."

 

"Still resisting turning right on red?"

 

"It violates one of the essential laws of the semantic universe. Red means stop, always. And especially in the context of traffic lights. It does not mean: go, if you think you can get away with it."

 

"Might get you here quicker, though."

 

"Nevertheless. Is Steve in?"

 

"Not yet. Think he's at a breakfast meeting with... I want to say Paracelsus Labs?"

 

"I should have known that, shouldn't I?"

 

"Nah. Not your job. You get to stay here in the Batcave with the gadgets and the blueprints."

 

"Making him... my Bruce Wayne? My public face?"

 

"Pete's been showing you his comic books, hasn't he?"

 

"Only the DC Universe. Marvel is apparently yet to come."

 

"You should check out The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen," says a voice from behind her. "It's probably more your speed."

 

"Myka's here," says Claudia.

 

"Thank you," says Helena. "It's keen observations like those that really justify your salary."

 

"I'm Robin, dude," says Claudia. "You can't fire Robin."

 

"Did I forget something?" says Helena to Myka, spinning around in her seat.

 

"Sandwiches," says Myka, handing her a Tupperware box. "I left them on the counter for you this morning."

 

"You made me sandwiches?"

 

"Peanut butter and jelly."

 

"Is this standard practice? Am I to expect a packed lunch whenever you work from home?"

 

"Not with that attitude."

 

"Ah, Hyka," says Claudia. "Getting cuter every day."

 

"I don't like that," says Myka.

 

"I shouldn't take it personally," says Helena. "Steve and I are Winks."

 

"Would've made a better name for this place," says Claudia. "Why hire Trident, when you could have Winks?"

 

"I stand by our decision," says Helena.

 

"I need to get back," says Myka. "I've got a catchup call with Irene at 10. Can you still do this afternoon?"

 

"Of course," says Helena. "I should be finished here by 3."

 

"I'll pick you up then. And bring your jacket - it's kind of windy out."

 

"Perfect," says Helena.

 

\----

 

"Steve seems happier," says Myka, later. "I saw him on the way out this morning."

 

"I think he is," says Helena, stretching out across the grass. "The Warehouse environment really wasn't right for him. He gives every appearance of being a company man, but the more I get to know him, the more I realise that he isn't actually all that corporate. Did I tell you I found him meditating at his desk yesterday?"

 

"Good for him. He used to have to sneak off to the restroom to do it."

 

She rearranges the blanket under them; settles into Helena's side.

 

"You've done well, to pull this off without him," says Helena, gesturing to the park, the bridge.

 

"I had a lot of support internally - you know how excited Irene's been."

 

"And I expect it helped to have such a fine design team at your disposal."

 

"I don't know. The project lead was sort of challenging."

 

"Good thing you were able to keep her in check."

 

"For all of us, I'd say."

 

Helena lays her head on the ground; looks up at the sky.

 

"Thank you," she says after a minute.

 

"For what?"

 

"Not holding it against me. What I did."

 

"I thought we were past this?"

 

"We are. It's just... today. It's brought things back, a little."

 

Myka squeezes her leg - lightly, forgivingly.

 

"They're starting," she says.

 

Helena looks out across the grassland, past the gathering crowd to the vast metal-and-cloth contraption resting beside the waterway. Somewhere inside, half-hidden by strings and pulleys, a man begins to pedal. The copper wheels turn; the great wings flap, slowly then faster, propelling the machine forwards, out towards the bay.

 

"It moves more quickly than I thought it would," she says.

 

The machine tilts; the wings bend and curve, up and down in the breeze, drawing it upwards and onwards, over the water.

 

"It's flying," says Myka. "It's actually flying."

 

"Yes," says Helena. "It actually is."

 


End file.
